


The Constant in the Chaos

by umadoshi (Ysabet)



Series: psychic wolves!Newsflesh AU [1]
Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Adopted Sibling Incest, Alternate Universe - Wolves, Canon Disabled Character, Consent Issues, F/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Minor Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, Psychic Wolves, as finished as it's getting, consent issues inherent to the trope, emotional monogamy in complicated circumstances, incomplete but not a WIP, terrible parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:33:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysabet/pseuds/umadoshi
Summary: In which Georgia Mason, age twelve, is unexpectedly chosen by and bonded to a female wolf cub, making her emotional relationships with her brother and parents even more fraught and complicated than they might otherwise have been.This story begins roughly ten years beforeFeed, when Georgia and Shaun are twelve, and continues until they’re eighteen or so. Please mind the content notes.





	1. 2030 - Age 12

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to ["Lost to Each Offering of Tenderness"](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Psychic_Wolves/works/13687731), which is set during _Feed_. This story is not required reading for that one to make sense.
> 
> Please note: this is as finished as it’s going to get, but be aware that it’s not quite _done_. All of the key scenes and emotional beats are here, but there isn’t as much connecting material as it would have in an ideal world. Where necessary for the plot to hang together, I’ve tucked notes into the text (formatted with blockquote), but I've tried to do that as few times as possible.
> 
> ...basically I’ve been working on this intermittently for FOUR YEARS, and while this is as complete as it’s getting, it’s also ~25,000 words and I like a lot of what’s in here, so I figured I may as well share what I’ve got.

I authorize my children, Georgia and Shaun Mason, to attend the grade 6 field trip to the Bay Area Wolfhall on April 21, 2030. I understand, consent to, and affirm the following:

My child(ren) will be in the presence of free-ranging mammals whose weight exceeds the amplification threshold of 40 lbs. Supervision will be provided at all times.

Lunch will be provided at the Wolfhall. My child requires the following meal option:

\--Halal  
\--Kosher  
\--Vegan (vegetarians, please select this option)

I have read and understand the following sections of the school handbook: Section 2.5.17 (liability), Section 5.14b (standard armaments carried by teachers when off school grounds), and Section 15.2.7 (additional liability).

I understand that for the duration of the visit, primary security will be provided by the Wolfhall residents and the trellwolves. Routine blood tests will be administered only upon entering and exiting the Wolfhall, which primarily relies on trellwolves' ability to detect live Kellis-Amberlee in spilled bodily fluids (blood, etc.) from a ten-foot distance (approximately) and to detect a mammal entering amplification within five minutes (approximately) of the conversion process beginning.

My contact information is on file with the school and up to date, as is that of the next five emergency contacts.

My child's living will is on file with the school and up to date.

 

Signature of parent or guardian: Stacy Mason  
Date: April 10, 2030

Additional information (please provide as much detail as necessary): Please make the Wolfhall liaisons explicitly aware of Georgia's retinal condition. As at school, she is permitted to make her own medication choices; if for any reason she is unable to make said choices, Shaun is authorized to make them on her behalf. These permissions and the specifics of Georgia's retinal Kellis-Amberlee are on file with the school. Georgia carries a medical card, three types of medication, and two spare pairs of sunglasses.

Both Georgia and Shaun hold basic firearm licenses and carry firearms when outside the home.

\--Standard permission form authorizing students to have supervised encounters with trellwolves. Few parents grant permission.

 

\----------

Simone,

How the hell did this happen? I swear to God, it'd be easier to issue a statement saying one of your wolves went ballistic and bit a kid than that ten normal students walked into your Wolfhall and only nine of them came back out. You and Nelson have spent **years** telling me that wolves don't bond with humans younger than fifteen or so!

I just had to talk to **Michael Mason** \--the U.C. Berkeley professor who saved God knows how many lives during the Rising, no big deal--and tell him his twelve-year-old daughter went and got herself bonded to a trellwolf and refused to do the smart thing and break the bond. Would you want to tell a minor celebrity that his kid isn't coming home for a month?

I have to make some kind of statement. What do you want me to say?

\--Email from Kayla Jordan, principal at [x] Elementary, to her sister Simone Langille, public relations liaison at the Bay Area Wolfhall, April 21, 2030

\----------

There is no way we could have seen that coming. I know a guy who bonded to his wolf a few days before he turned fourteen, and until now, he was the youngest I knew of. And pups don't usually choose their humans until they're at least four months old and ready to be weaned. A three-month-old pup choosing **anyone** is ridiculous, but the mother's bondmate swears up and down it's a solid bond.

We did everything the way we always do. The kids went in and met the litter. The mother let the kids pet them. And then we took the kids down to a meeting room to talk to the pack leader, and the girl, Georgia, just left. Her brother got spooked and made a female classmate check the bathroom, and Georgia wasn't there, so we went looking. When we found her back with the litter, she said the pup had been crying for her.

The bond's **strong** , Kay. The puppy's too young to leave her family, and your student doesn't have the first clue about what any of this entails beyond what "everyone knows" from the media. So I'm sorry, but we're keeping her here until the pup can be weaned and Georgia knows what to expect out of this. We'll set her up with one of the families here for a month or so.

Again, I'm sorry, but if she won't repudiate the bond, our hands are tied here.

Call me. We'll work out a statement.

\--Email from Simone Langille to Kayla Jordan, April 21, 2030

 

\----------

Time's definitely up for keeping Georgia and Glimmer here. It's great that we managed to keep them for almost a week longer than her parents agreed to originally, but I've had Michael Mason on the phone every one of those extra days, demanding hour-long updates on how Georgia's doing. (I'm sure you've seen his blog posts.)

So here's my final report before they go:

\--Georgia and Glimmer are still bound good and tight. Georgia's pack sense is about average, and the two of them are both extremely precocious and smart as hell. That said, Glimmer doesn't have the drive to dominate that characterizes a queen wolf. If we have to let a bitch live off-site and get only a few litters out of her over her lifetime, at least we're not all but losing a queen here.

\--Intellectually, Georgia's made huge inroads into grasping pack and Wolfhall culture. She's not squeamish about feeding Glimmer or taking her to hunt. She's read easily a dozen key texts on wolf and wolf-affected psych and sociology, and has several more loaded up on her tablet. And while she's still wary around full-grown wolves, she's made real progress there too, especially considering her family's history with large mammals.

\--On the down side, her trust issues haven't improved significantly during her stay. She's been consistently polite to me and Kenji, but she's got walls a mile high. She likes a lot of things about being here, and is willing to discuss the things she **doesn't** like, which implies a certain sense of security, but I've only ever seen her relax when she's been caught up in Glimmer or on the phone with her brother.

\--I think she'd benefit from a lot more time here, but she's still pining for her brother as badly as she was on her first night. I can't speak to how normal that degree of attachment is; how does it stack up against the degree of homesickness new bond-mates usually feel, when the "usual" is a 17- or 19-year-old boy who's competed his way in here and actively wanted this life? I don't feel comfortable making that judgment.

I'll ask her one more time if she wants to file for emancipation and be formally taken into Wolfhall custody, but I can't see her accepting unless we could somehow get her brother too. And we all know that's not possible.

\--Email from Angelique Takayama, Georgia Mason's den mother, to Bay Area Wolfhall members [named redacted] (cc Simone Langille), May 29, 2030

 

**********  
**May 2030 - Age 12**  
**********

"Do you have everything packed up for tomorrow?"

"Yes, Kenji," Georgia said. She kept looking out the window into the darkness of the Wolfhall's vast greenspace, which was surrounded on all sides by the complex of the hall itself. The only large mammals to ever enter it were humans and their trellwolves, who ran and played and fought freely while always alert for the intrusion of any other creature that might be carrying the Kellis-Amberlee virus. The wolves' noses were the most important tool for their collective protection, as the grass was constantly being bloodied by the wolves hunting and devouring the large game birds that lived inside.

Georgia's adoptive parents had taken care to raise her and her brother, Shaun, with as much exposure to the natural world as they could manage. The first time Georgia had set foot in the greenspace, she'd been treated to the sight of boys several years older than her inching out cautiously into the open while she and Glimmer strode out easily. Most of the boys had adjusted well--and perhaps faster than they might have without a twelve-year-old girl showing them up. It hadn't kept them from staring enviously at her and the small wolf pup dashing in widening circles around her.

She turned from the window and offered Kenji Takayama a small smile. "It's not like I have much stuff here."

"True," he agreed. His wife, Angelique, had been formally responsible for Georgia's care and education during her time at the Bay Area Wolfhall; Kenji had done his part on those fronts, but his real responsibility to Georgia and her wolf-sister had been to model a healthy, comfortable bond between an adult human and wolf who were not fully part of a pack. "So that's it, then, huh?"

"That's it." Georgia reached down and scritched Glimmer's ears, earning a wide yawn from her wolf. "I'm going to bed."

"Okay. Sleep tight."

"We will."

Ensconced safely in the dark guest room, which the Takayamas had fitted with black lights for her stay, Georgia took off her sunglasses and rubbed her eyes, tired but too alert to think sleep would come easily. Glimmer whined drowsily, keenly interested in _sleep now_.

"You can sleep without me, silly," Georgia said. She snuggled up against Glimmer in the bed, using the wolf's flank as a pillow. Glimmer grumbled and fell asleep instantly, entirely content.

Glimmer's body heat and the faint warmth of the pack sense around them--so nebulous when Georgia didn't focus on it--were comforting, but Georgia still found it distressing to go to sleep without Shaun close by, even after several weeks of separation. She and her brother had shared a bedroom since the day their parents brought them home from their respective orphanages; now she didn't feel safe even calling him at night, no matter how desperately she wanted to hear his breathing as well as Glimmer's as she drifted off. The chances of a parent listening in were too high.

 _But I'll see him soon._ The longing in the thought was an ache even Glimmer's presence couldn't soothe, deeper than the itch of the mostly-healed tattoo around her right wrist. It was a bracelet inked into her skin in bold strokes, marking her as wolf-bound--both warning and identification. Before the Rising, subtler tattoos had been permitted. Now they carried the added role of advertising the probable presence of a large mammal in the vicinity of the wearer.

When sleep did come, Georgia's dreams were full of her human brother and her wolf-sister-- _family_ and _pack_ \--and the few memories that contained both of them.

_When their class met the rambunctious litter of wolf pups, Shaun had been the first to pet one, had been laughing delightedly before any other students got up the nerve to even approach. "George, check out how soft they are!" So she had._

_Later, the whining no one else seemed to hear, tugging until it felt like her heart would be torn out through her chest if she didn't answer._

_The wolf pups had moved on to a different room in an area of the Wolfhall not included in the class' tour, but Georgia's heart knew where her wolf was, and an itch in her mind--the pack sense, she later realized--told her how to get there. Faced with the idea of trying to explain something so nonsensical to a teacher, or even to Shaun, she slipped away..._

_She found her wolf so easily, falling to her knees, and the gangly pup clambered onto her, filling her lap and her arms and her mind with warmth and lovelovelovelove._

_Two days later, naming that silver, golden-eyed bundle "Glimmer", and adding, "because that's all the light I can handle" to make Shaun laugh; through the phone, he said it was the only poetic moment she'd ever had in her life, and she laughed too._

Girl and wolf cuddled closer together in their sleep, lulled by the pack.

**********

There was a media circus on the lawn when they reached the family home in Berkeley the next day--a small one, by the Masons' standards. Stacy and Michael Mason were famous and notorious for many reasons, including the death of their biological son and their resulting vocal support of keeping large mammals tightly restricted and _away from humans_. But Georgia had read all of her parents' press releases and blog posts during the five weeks she'd been gone, dutifully memorizing their talking points and learning what they wanted their audiences to think about the upcoming experience of having a Real! Live! Trellwolf! under their roof. She'd read about her father's negotiations with the school she and Shaun had been attending, and about her mother's excitement at the spice Glimmer's presence would surely give family outings, and about the extra security measures and renovations the house and back yard had undergone.

She'd stared at Shaun's face in the videos, barely listening to the agreeable things he was saying, although she smiled at the sincere excitement in his tone--Shaun, at least, was genuinely thrilled over the thought of Glimmer coming to live with them, as well as wanting Georgia back home.

As her father's Jeep pulled into the driveway and stopped, rather than immediately going into the garage, Georgia put on her best professional smile and buried her fingers in Glimmer's ruff, as much to comfort herself as her sister. _I'm fine. It's okay. This is normal,_ she thought.

Glimmer licked Georgia's hand, confused by the apologetic whiff of the thought. _Pack_ flowed wordlessly between them. _Your home. Our home. Together._

"Welcome home, Georgia," Michael said. The engine kept idling, a signal to the gathered reporters that this public glimpse of Georgia's homecoming would be brief.

"Thanks, Dad." She offered a little wave at the window, and Glimmer gamely popped her head up.

At least ten flashes went off. Georgia winced inwardly. She was home, all right.

**********

Home, it turned out, had changed more than Georgia had expected. The back yard was unrecognizable, with updated fencing and surveillance equipment. The entrances to the garage and the house proper had all been modified for trellwolf blood testing and access. Georgia was all too aware--because her mother had been all too happy to explain at length--of the skyrocketing cost of the household insurance--never mind that, unless someone had _just_ had a blood test, trellwolves' noses provided better advance detection of the live-state Kellis-Amberlee virus or the early stages of amplification (or "zombification", which Shaun was still saying at every opportunity because it drove Stacy up the wall) than anything technology had to offer.

Those changes were not the unexpected ones.

"What do you mean?" Georgia asked, staring at Shaun with the blank horror of someone desperately hoping she'd misunderstood. She and Glimmer had been home for an hour, and hadn't even been upstairs. Shaun had only now managed to get her alone for long enough to deliver news she hadn't been at all braced for.

"They moved all my things this morning," he repeated. "Bed, clothes, books, everything. They think it's a done deal."

Georgia's shock was fading quickly; beside her, Glimmer's ears went back and her lips curled in echo of Georgia's rising fury. A done deal? Dragging Shaun out of the bedroom the two of them had shared since the day their parents brought them home? Expecting him to just settle happily into the adjacent room as if that were somehow better? As if it were _acceptable_?

She was too tired and overwhelmed to fight back immediately. Instead, she gave Stacy and Michael an expressionless nod when they told her. She and Shaun both pleaded exhaustion as early as they possibly could, and they fled upstairs with Glimmer.

Out of their parents' sight, they matter-of-factly built a blanket fort of their mattresses and bedding in the middle of Georgia's-- _their_ \--bedroom floor. Children and wolf cub curled up in their little nest, so that Glimmer and Shaun could begin getting accustomed to each other's presence, and so he and Georgia could nestle together and _touch_.

Neither of them cried from the relief of being together again--Georgia because she couldn't, and Shaun because he couldn't alone. Glimmer clambered over them and licked and pawed, filling Georgia's mind with the reassurance of _pack_ and _unity_. Even the tiniest wolf cub knew how desperately important those things were, and Glimmer gave voice to the humans' wordless joy while they petted and praised her and clung to each other.

**********

The next morning, when Georgia had finally begun feeling like she could breathe again, she rubbed Glimmer's ears reassuringly and thought, _I need to talk to Shaun alone._ She put all the information she could into it, trying to convey _humans only_ and _it's only that he doesn't know you yet_ , and above all, _I'm right here in your head, I love you, I'm here_.

The pup whined uncertainly and nosed the back of Georgia's knee, but obligingly nudged the door open and slipped out of the bedroom. Georgia tracked her with both ears and mind as Glimmer padded down the hall to explore the room that held all of Shaun's belongings.

It took her a moment to steel herself. She leaned against the wall and watched Shaun, who was seated at her desk and to all appearances--to any eyes but hers--fully engrossed in his tablet game.

There was no point dancing around it. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Shaun tapped the screen and tossed the device aside to give his sister his full attention.

Georgia gestured in the direction of her curious wolf. "I know you're jealous," she said. "I don't know what to do about it. I can't make it right."

"There's nothing to make right. She wanted you, and she claimed you. She has good taste." He said that last with one of the smiles that no one but Georgia was ever on the receiving end of. "Sure, I'm jealous, but so what? Who wouldn't be?"

"Lots of people."

"Yeah, lots of stupid people. She's a _wolf_." Before Glimmer, Georgia would have given an amused nod at the wonder in his voice. Now she could only agree. "So I'm jealous, but I'll get over it." Shaun saw her mouth open to say something else, and guessed what she was going to say. "And in the meantime, keep telling me about it. I mean it. The only way this is gonna _hurt_ me is if it takes you away from me."

"It won't." Fervor made the denial louder than Georgia had meant; she dropped her voice. "It can't."

Shaun laughed. "Sure it _can_ , George. Come on. It's possible. But if you say it won't, I believe you." He stood and hugged her. "You don't need to keep her out."

"Okay." Behind her sunglasses, where he couldn't see, her eyes unfocused as she called to her sister. _Come back now, if you want._

Glimmer did want. A minute later they heard the scuff of still-awkward wolf pup paws in the hallway, and then her head poked around the door. She came straight to them, nuzzling Georgia's thigh and head-butting the side of Shaun's knee.

"Down," Georgia translated, and then, "And she expects you to know that without my help next time."

Shaun snorted. "Give me a second, will you?" he said to Glimmer, letting go of Georgia and kneeling. "What's up?"

The wolf shoved her forehead against his chest with a low whine, inviting ear-scratches. He glanced up and shook his head before Georgia could interpret. "I got it, don't worry." He began scritching obediently. Glimmer flopped down on her side and put her head on his knee. He licked his lips nervously as Georgia knelt too, petting Glimmer's flank. "George, did you--" She raised questioning eyebrows. "Is this you? Your idea?" He nodded down at the blissed-out pup lying between them.

"Nope. This is all her." She smiled at the awestruck look on his face. "She's in my head, dummy. She can feel how much I love you." The smile stayed, but sadness tinged it. "I wish you could feel it like she can."

She reached over Glimmer and put a hand on Shaun's shoulder, tugging him until their foreheads were pressed together. It gave him a tiny glimpse over the frames of her sunglasses, showing that her eyes were squeezed tightly shut. "Are you trying to talk to me?" he asked, under his breath to keep from breaking her concentration.

Silence stretched between them; even Glimmer seemed to be breathing shallowly. "Yes," Georgia admitted at last. "It's not working."

"George, it's okay."

"I want you to know what she calls you." Her voice was very small.

Glimmer gave a puzzled whine and rolled onto her belly, nudging Georgia's leg and then looking up at Shaun. It didn't take a psychic bond for him to know what that meant. _Do something,_ she was saying.

"Does she know that's what you want?" he asked.

There was another silence, the kind Shaun was already learning meant that Georgia and Glimmer were focused on communicating something very specific. _It's hard,_ Georgia had said in her very first call home. _We can hear each other fine, but our vocabulary is completely different. It's hard to get some specifics across. Some things will never be easy to say._

Glimmer snorted and sat up, shoving her hard, no-longer-so-little skull under their chins to push them apart. Huge puppy paws planted themselves on Shaun's thighs, and then that almost-laughing face was right by his, blowing the distinctive scent of wolf breath at him. He tried to mirror her focus.

Minutes passed. Then a smell blew through his mind, like a gust of wind. He couldn't imagine where Glimmer had gotten her reference points, or if she'd ever smelled the things she'd decided to name him for, but there was no mistaking the blend of scents: _sun-warmed, late-summer grass, flavored with hot metal and coppery blood_ \--the exciting tang of blood in a predator's nose, not the sickly smell humans had come to associate with it.

"That's my name?" His voice cracked on the question. Georgia nodded, trembling with excitement. He looked back and forth between them. "Can she--Glimmer, can you--what's yours?" His eyes wound up on Georgia, who touched Glimmer's ruff.

This time, in comparison, the scent came into his mind easily, and again, Shaun couldn't imagine how Glimmer knew the smells--or how he recognized them all himself. Georgia's name, the pup informed him in that intense, wordless burst of _sense_ , was the scent of pine and deep, still snow.

And there was something else, something not a scent: Glimmer's vibrant, deep love for her human sister. It felt nothing at all like his own love for Georgia, other than their loves being for the same girl.

It made them _kin_ , him and this half-wild baby animal.

"Shaun?" Georgia saying his name snapped him back to normal consciousness. He was immediately aware that his knees ached; that Georgia was closer to him than she had been been, looking uncertain; and that his face was wet, even though he didn't feel like he'd been crying. "You've been zoned out for a while. You okay?"

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine. I'm great, actually."

"Good." She wiped tears off his cheek with her palm, hesitated, then kissed his other cheek. His breath hitched when she licked her lips, and she froze.

"It's all right," he managed. She kissed his face again, on a different tear-track. He managed to stay relaxed when her tongue grazed his skin--a touch so slight he could pretend he was imagining it, so she could tell herself he hadn't noticed, if doing it made her feel strange later.

Her damp hand dropped to her side, unnoticed by either of them, and Glimmer licked those tears away.

**********

With each passing day I've received more correspondence regarding Georgia's return to school, and I'm pleased to announce that the details have been finalized--although not in as groundbreaking a way as we'd hoped. Yes, my daughter is going to be heading back to class as of Monday, but without her trellwolf. Despite testimony from full-time residents of the Wolfhall, fear won the day and no new precedent has been set which would permit her wolf to accompany her.

Some long-time readers have asked whether Stacy and I will be transferring the children to a new school, as we did when their old school began to require an unnecessary and invasive number of daily blood tests for all students. The answer is no. There are no schools that would currently make allowances for my daughter's bond-wolf to be on the premises. What's more, any school we approached would be as liable as this one to use the present state and federal legislation against us, including--and I'm sure you all see the irony, as do we--Mason's Law.

At any rate, Georgia's life, and that of our entire family, has been disrupted enough this year. Her trellwolf will be spending schooldays at the Wolfhall, as residents have offered to take on the responsibility of picking the wolf and our children up each morning, dropping the kids off, and taking the wolf to socialize with her own kind, and then ferrying them all home in reverse.

Naturally Stacy and I would prefer to take on this responsibility ourselves, but our professional time commitments did not work in our favor, and the Wolfhall understandably prefers not to let ordinary citizens be alone with trellwolves in the absence of a wolf's human partner.

\--From _Breathing Biology_ , the blog of Michael Mason. June 7, 2030.

**********

Stacy and Michael didn't take their children's refusal to move into separate bedrooms lying down, but it was a fortnight before they pushed the issue.

After those two weeks, Michael and Stacy called a family meeting. The two of them sat together on the couch in the family room, forming a visually-united front, with Shaun and Georgia sitting opposite them: Shaun in Michael's recliner, Georgia in the easy chair with Glimmer bundled onto her lap.

Throughout the kids' childhood, Stacy had usually taken the lead in "discussions" where she and Michael had a foregone conclusion in mind and were willing to make concessions to get it, but not to budge on the ultimate result. Georgia and Shaun had long since learned to use those occasions to wrangle things out of their parents that they might otherwise have been unable to: equipment upgrades, allowance increases, more say in family expeditions. Their mother was implacable and their father was persuasive, the very face of reason, even when various negotiations left Georgia shaking with frustration afterwards at her inability to change their minds, no matter what she and Shaun might have gotten in return.

So it caught both children off guard when it was Michael who said, without preamble, "Kids, we need to talk about your bedroom situation."

Georgia and Shaun didn't so much as glance at each other. "It's fine the way it is," Georgia said. Within two days she and Shaun had moved all of his things back into their room, with Glimmer "helpfully" supervising.

"I'm afraid it's not," Michael said. "You two are practically teenagers. You're going to need privacy sooner rather than later. And Georgia, the Wolfhall has been clear that you and Glimmer ought to maximize your time alone together at this stage, if you want this bond of yours to be a healthy one."

That wasn't precisely what the Wolfhall elders had said, and the entire family knew it. The key thing now was for a _pack_ to spend time isolated from other wolves and humans, as the pack settled into its new formation.

Glimmer whined quietly from Georgia's lap, picking up on her sister's silent tension.

It was Shaun who opened his mouth to reply, but Stacy cut him off, her voice cold and flat.

"No. You are not part of their little pack, and you're not going to be." Her eyes flicked to Georgia. "No matter how stubborn you are about this--" A minuscule, weighted pause left room for any number of choice nouns after _this_ "--Shaun's not part of it. You can't bludgeon him into it through sheer force of will, darling."

No argument either Georgia or Shaun could muster swayed their parents on the separate bedrooms issue. Finally, painfully, they began negotiating for concessions.

**********

I swear to God they argued us into ripping out the bedroom closets so they can have their own bathroom and a private door between their rooms--Georgia slipped _that_ one in like she thought we wouldn't notice, the sneaky little thing--just so they can watch us hemorrhage money to make them do what they're told.

Either that or we've raised kids so detached from reality that they don't realize renovations are fucking expensive.

I think it's clear which of those scenarios is more likely.

\--From _Stacy's Survival Strategies_ , the blog of Stacy Mason. June 16, 2030. Unpublished.

**********

It was an indication of the Masons' reputation that, while Georgia and Shaun's school refused to even consider allowing Glimmer to accompany Georgia to classes, the family didn't have to do nearly as much research as most people would to learn which local establishments were trellwolf friendly, or amenable to being persuaded. Instead, restaurants and shops reached out to them, hoping to secure their business before old favorite establishments could be convinced to permit Glimmer's presence.

As far back as the children could remember, their parents had been in the public eye, which meant Georgia and Shaun were too. The Masons made a habit of very publicly visiting Berkeley businesses as soon as possible after outbreaks to prove that they trusted the security protocols, and they encouraged other people to do the same, helping to keep the local economy going and the community spirit reasonably high.

And unlike most semi-public figures--journalists or not--Stacy and Michael went well beyond putting their money where their mouths were: they brought their precious, irreplaceable children as proof of their confidence.

(With the particular black humor that Georgia and Shaun developed out of emotional self-preservation, they'd spent a good chunk of the year they were nine exaggeratedly mouthing "irreplaceable!!!" at each other. They were all too keenly aware that they _were_ the Masons' failed attempt at replacement children--unable to either replace Phillip in their parents' shattered hearts or carve out their own places there through the scarring left by his death.)

Within six months of Georgia and Glimmer coming home, the doors of ten restaurants and a handful of other establishments had newly opened their doors to trellwolves, provided a reservation was made. It was good for the humans of the Wolfhall, whose options for shopping and socializing without leaving their wolves home had been so limited that any improvement was cheering; good for the businesses themselves, as the Masons reciprocated in publicity; and good for the family, as Michael ran an ongoing series of reports about the slow reintegration of trellwolves into post-Rising society, and Stacy gained a new gleam of notoriety as a working Irwin who spent more time in the presence of large carnivores than anyone but specialists.

She savored that notoriety like a fine wine, and if she drank more actual wine than she had before Glimmer moved in under her roof, well, everyone knew about Phillip. It was hard not to feel sympathy and admiration for a woman who'd been forced to put a bullet through her firstborn's skull after a bite from an amplifying dog and yet was able to accept a trellwolf into her home rather than break her only daughter's heart.

**********

> _[GAP: Once the renovations are finished, Shaun still winds up sleeping in Georgia's bedroom with her and Glimmer. Thanks to the connecting door between the rooms, they mostly keep that fact far enough under the radar that Michael and Stacy can pretend to ignore it.]_
> 
> _[Note re: trellwolf biology: the expectation is that it'll be another couple of years before Glimmer has her first heat. Female trellwolves are usually allowed to go through heat once or twice before ever actually mating, and most matings don't result in cubs, thanks to an array of modern hormone medication that helps the Wolfhalls keep the population under fairly tight control. This control has increased dramatically since the Rising took place in 2014. Trellwolves are extremely useful in the detection of early amplification/live-state Kellis Amberlee, which is the main reason public opinion hasn't turned against them **quite** to the point of having them wiped out--that, and the fact that many politically-powerful families have Wolfhall lineage going way back.]_


	2. 2032 - Age 14

**********  
 **2032 - Age 14**  
**********

 

Glimmer broke into a trot, swerving in front of Georgia and coming to an immediate halt, legs stiff and tail bristling. _Wrong,_ came the flood of warning in Georgia's head.

Shaun stopped almost as quickly, taking two steps backwards to stand at Georgia's side. "What?"

Georgia touched Glimmer's ears. "Infection," she murmured back. "One of our friendly neighbors." _Who?_ she asked Glimmer. A trickle of uncertainty flowed back--there were too many people, too close together. Georgia counted five of them. And at least one of them was in the process of becoming a walking corpse. "We don't know," she told Shaun.

He followed her gaze, assessing the strangers. "None of them look sick. Or worried."

"Spontaneous amplification?" she asked, unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice. Spontaneous amplification was a known possibility, but it was extremely rare in adults-- "Shit," she hissed. "There's a kid back there. Behind the grownups. That's probably who it is."

Shaun didn't flinch, but he leaned against Glimmer too for just an instant. "Reservoir condition?" He sounded sick just saying it. They'd spent nearly a decade dealing with strangers' paranoia over Georgia's condition, fighting back and insisting she wasn't a risk just because there was live virus ensconced in her eyes. And for most people with a viral reservoir, it was true. There was barely any unusual risk in being around them...

...except when they were crossing the weight threshold where Kellis-Amberlee could transform anyone from the inside out, rather than killing them.

"We have to say something," Georgia said. "It's an outbreak waiting to happen."

Shaun was silent, wanting to argue. Georgia knew his unspoken protests almost as well as she would if he were in her head like Glimmer. Trellwolves alarmed most people; being told by a girl living with a reservoir condition that a child might have one that was about to prove fatal could easily result in a violent response. So many people lived on the trigger's edge of irrationality, trying to pretend that death wasn't sleeping in their veins and just waiting for its wake-up call.

Teenagers like Georgia and Shaun, born after the Rising, had been taught since before their earliest memories to respond appropriately in horrific circumstances, and that training was still so often insufficient when it came down to it. For adults like the group they were looking at, that training broke down as often as it held.

"I know," Shaun agreed finally. He scritched Glimmer's ruff briskly. "Let's do it."

The small knot of adult neighbors broke apart at their approach, anxious gazes sweeping them. People didn't congregate on sidewalks; the conversation being interrupted was clearly a brief one, desperate pleasantries being exchanged on the occasion of meeting a neighbor on the street. _Normalcy_ was something everyone in the neighborhood clung to; if they didn't, they'd live in gated communities or never leave their homes. Georgia knew them all on sight, now that she was paying attention.

Worse, as they drifted apart and she and Shaun saw the little boy who was looking into a shop window, she knew _him_ , too. His name was in the back of her mind somewhere. And he was almost certainly about to die. The question was whether he'd take anyone else with him.

Georgia determinedly kept the memory of the boy's name at bay. In a few minutes, one way or another, she'd let herself remember it.

One of the two men--one of the boy's fathers; Georgia didn't see the other--nodded at their approach. "You kids have business in there?" he asked, glancing at the store.

"No," Georgia said. She put a hand on Glimmer's shoulder, felt the wolf trembling.

_Not safe not safe not safe..._ Glimmer was struggling not to hackle or snarl, working to trust her human sister's judgment instead of closing teeth over Georgia's sleeve and dragging her away from the smell of impending death.

_I know,_ Georgia thought back to her. _I know._

"Hi, Mr. Franklin," she said, pitching her voice into that _calm_ range their father had drilled into her and Shaun both. _Calm, calm, calm._ "We were just heading home, and Glimmer smelled something off."

Five adult faces paled or tightened. The little boy turned away from the window in time to see the sudden tension, and immediately went to his father, wrapping his little arms around one thigh.

Shaun spoke up before any of them could realize Georgia was staring at the boy from behind her dark sunglasses. "Has Jord--" _That was his name, that little kid_ "--ever been tested for a reservoir condition?"

"No," Mr. Franklin said. "Why do you ask?"

That was denial in action; the other adults, as much through the panic bubbling beneath the surface in nearly everyone as through conscious processing, were already making the connection between Georgia's statement and Shaun's question. They were edging away.

"Given what Glimmer's smelling, we think each of you should take a blood test," Georgia said. She kept her voice even; it was the closest to "gentle" this news could ever be. "Jord looks like he's right on the weight threshold, and if he has a viral reservoir, that could be a problem."

Mr. Franklin's eyes shadowed as the denial deepened. "We'll do no such thing."

It wasn't the first time Georgia had found herself bitterly wishing that the weight threshold were called anything but "the Mason Barrier". "We've told you all we know," she said. "So Shaun and I are going to back away, and then we're going to make a couple of phone calls."

"Going to" was an understatement. Jord's little face was pale under its dusky tones, and he was starting to look dazed. Shaun was already dialing.

"Hang up that phone!" Mr. Franklin snapped, but Shaun already had an open line, was already relaying their suspicions to the 799 operator. It was a matter of only minutes before an official vehicle arrived, disgorging two officers in basic field safety garb: every inch of skin from throat to feet was covered, along with half of their faces.

Shaun waved grimly, signaling that he was the person on the line. He and Georgia went through the same process as their neighbors, still at a safe enough remove that Glimmer wasn't full-on snarling: they stepped back while testing units were set down, stepped forward to get them once the officers were safely out of range, shoved their fingers into each other's units. They tested clean, and so did Glimmer, once a specialized testing unit was passed over.

Their adult neighbors all tested clean too. Jord Franklin-Lohnes, age five, did not.

Shaun and Georgia didn't need to confer or even exchange glances to know that they were in agreement about staying. Glimmer's keen nose and their own intervention might have made this the smallest tragedy it could be, but it was a tragedy nonetheless.

They flanked Glimmer wordlessly, hands on the wolf's head and shoulders, fingers brushing together through her coarse fur. They listened while Mr. Franklin, who they'd known most of their lives in that vague "adult down the street" way, insisted on a second blood test for Jord, and while he called his husband to tell him that their son was legally dead and on his way to breathing his last.

They stayed while the other adults left, while the little boy was injected with a heavy sedative; they stayed until a trigger was pulled and Kellis-Amberlee claimed another family, leaving Mr. Franklin staring blankly at nothing while his husband wept on the phone.

**********

"Did you get any good footage?" was all their mother asked, after they explained why they were late getting home.

Georgia and Shaun _did_ need to confer on that--not on the quality of their footage, but on what to do with it. In the end they licensed it to their parents in exchange for credit and a percentage cut; they'd shaped the news into something less interesting and less horrific than it could have been, and their parents were better suited to turning out a quiet story of trauma.

Michael Mason released a thoughtful piece the next morning. It in he wrote about how some losses could never be fully recovered from, and yet life could go on--must go on--regardless. He and Stacy offered their deepest condolences and empathy to the Franklin-Lohnes family on the loss of their son.

The Mason name gave the story added visibility; Glimmer's involvement heightened the never-ending debate about trellwolves living among humans, adding some weight on the side of the wolves' presence doing more good than harm. A crisis had almost certainly been averted.

Over the next few days, Shaun and Georgia accepted two interview requests and declined a handful more, and used their share of their parents' revenue to invest in new shoulder-mount cameras that bumped their equipment from the high-end amateur enthusiast range into low-end but acceptable professional caliber. Their father nodded approvingly, and made a short, thoughtful blog post about teaching kids how to be respectful of the source of their income.

"We're profiting off a kid's death," Georgia said into the dark that night, just to say it aloud. One of them had to. She was lying on the floor with her head on Glimmer's flank, eyes closed while she breathed the familiar scent of _wolf_.

Shaun replied from over their heads, where he was lying on her bed. "Yeah," was all he said. There was nothing to reconcile. The news paid the bills, and the news was as often about the dead and dying as about the living.


	3. 2033 - Age 15

> _[GAP: Skipping ahead by another year, we’re bypassing a fraught early adolescence. Stacy is continuing to unravel more and more. Georgia, Shaun, and Glimmer are a very tight little pack of three, and both G &S have started wrestling with feelings that they’re each pretty sure they should **not** be feeling for a sibling, even if they’re not blood related._
> 
> _Which brings us to the day they can’t keep denying it to themselves or each other.]_

**********  
 **2033 - Age 15**  
**********

Glimmer gave a soft _whuff_ that was both sad and impatient; she could tell Georgia was conflicted, but was puzzled as to why. The picture/not-a-picture that surfaced in Georgia's mind was clear: it was rare, but sometimes littermates mated. Georgia wanted Shaun. He wanted her. Where was the difficulty?

Georgia sent back uncertainty over Glimmer's assessment--Glimmer had never even been in heat, and couldn't know these things!--and the impression they had agreed on years ago that meant "humans do things differently".

Glimmer ignored the second thought entirely. She licked her chops, thought Shaun's scent-name, and pointedly sniffed the air. A certain smugness shaded her response, of being so clearly in the right. The thought _He wants you right now_ couldn't have been plainer if it had been in words.

"What's she saying?" Shaun asked. Georgia didn't answer, and after a silence, he added, "You're kinda freaking me out."

"What do you want us to be? Me and you?" She turned slowly to look at him. Wolves were direct, and their bonded humans became direct too, if they hadn't been that way already. Georgia had always been rigorously straightforward; what had changed was how Glimmer's presence made people accept it more easily from a girl her age. "Glimmer says you want me. I know you love me, but _how_ do you love me?"

Shaun stared back at them, paling. "George--"

The acrid smell of his sudden alarm--his _terror_ \--flowed to her through Glimmer, who stood, shook herself, and loped over to him. Putting her forepaws up on the bed, Glimmer nosed him below the jaw, licked his cheek, and waited.

"Every way," he said, eyes bleak, looking like he expected...Georgia wasn't sure. Like he expected her to scream, or lash out, or--

Or like he expected her to be quietly disgusted and pull away from him--withdraw from him utterly, and he couldn't lose her, any more than she could lose him. She felt his fear sting Glimmer's nose, earning a perplexed whine. _Pack_ could be chastised or irritated or contrite, even angry, but Shaun's fear, what felt like fear _of Georgia_ , was beyond Glimmer's comprehension.

"No," Georgia said, sharper than she'd meant. Glimmer's distress was building. Georgia felt it trickle along her own nerves and thicken in her throat, saw Shaun recognize it through the physical signals she didn't need to rely on. Her brother and her wolf both trembled, unable to soothe or ignore each other's unease.

That left Georgia, the core of their little pack, to calm them both, as if her palms weren't damp and her heart weren't racing at the thought of the precipice she and Shaun were standing on.

She got up and went to them, offering Glimmer all the reassurance she could scrape together before tamping down the connection between them as far as possible. Glimmer settled back to the floor, letting Georgia have the spot beside Shaun on the bed.

"No," she repeated. "It's okay." But she already knew words wouldn't matter--even the fact that she never lied to him wouldn't matter, not when he also knew how far she'd go to protect his heart. She took one of his hands in hers, leaned in close, and kissed him before he could reply.

It was the first kiss either of them had ever had, and they were both clumsy about it, but he kissed her back with a desperation that said he didn't believe her yet--didn't dare believe her. He kissed her as if it was the only time he'd ever have his mouth on hers, maybe the last time he'd ever touch her at all.

She pulled back just far enough to say his name. He said hers first. "George, don't. If you're trying not to hurt me--"

 _"Shaun."_ The edge in her voice silenced him. "That's not what I'm doing." She went back to kissing him, gently this time, kissing his lower lip, then the upper. She would have been inhaling his breath if he hadn't all but stopped breathing.

He was scared. She was touching him, and he was _scared_. The wrongness made her want to snarl. It also made her want to touch him more, _show him_ how wrong that was, how right it could be. Simply kissing him was filling her with warmth, making her limbs tingle and her body ache with desire.

 _Glimmer,_ she thought, making a gentle plea for help.

Her wolf stood back up, stretched, and nipped Shaun's free hand to get his attention. Glimmer kept her teeth closed on his fingers until he looked at her, and Georgia followed his gaze. Glimmer let go, shoved her nose against his leg, and gave him an unmistakable look of exasperation.

"I'm going to tell you what she's saying," Georgia said, "because if you hear it from both of us you might listen. _Don't be a blockhead._ " She brushed her fingers across his forehead, and enunciated carefully. "I love you, okay? And I want you too. I want you so much." She kissed his mouth again, winning herself a disbelieving gasp and then an answering kiss.

His lips on hers dragged a low sound of pleasure out of her. Her nerves were electric, her muscles liquefying--her whole body promising an ecstasy worthy of water and electricity coming together, if she only reached out and took it.

She slid a hand behind Shaun's neck and knelt over him, tucking her other hand down at his side, fingertips drifting under the waist of his jeans to find bare skin. It was his turn to make an inarticulate noise, the half-familiar, subtle smell of his desire prickling her/Glimmer's nose over the fading tang of fear. "I want you," she said again, touching her tongue to his lip.

His mouth opened wider, giving her an answering caress of tongue, until they were whimpering and panting together, bodies moving unsteadily without quite touching where they both wanted it most. "I can tell," he said, between awkward, enticing kisses. He was relaxing under her touch, trusting the message she was trying to convey with every word, every caress, every thought that stayed trapped in her skull instead of flowing to his mind from hers. Only Glimmer could hear her wordless assurances of love and yearning, and Glimmer had understood before she had.

"Shaun," she murmured, just to say it where he could hear, to breathe his name into his mouth and lick it back off his lips. "Shaun, Shaun, Shaun..." Instinct, as dark and hot and rich as marrow, hammered in her temples and under her ribs, between her legs, driving her close-cut nails into his scalp and his bare hip. His hands closed on her thighs in response--stroking her, feeling how her legs were shaking.

He went readily when she pushed him down on his back, his hips lifting so his groin touched hers. That fleeting press of hardness left her head swimming with her escalating need, made her frantic to tear at his clothes; she needed him naked _now_ , needed him inside her, quenching his own desire in hers.

"Help me." The words cracked between her lips, rebelling against being spoken. Her stomach wrenched at the betrayal. "Shaun, help--"

Shaun sat up immediately, grabbing her upper arms. "George?"

"I can't think straight. I want you too much." She dragged her fingertips convulsively along his jaw--mapping his face, scratching lightly at his skin. "I'll take you if you let me."

He blinked at her, the alarm in his eyes changing to confusion. "What do you mean, if I _let_ you?"

"It's why they don't like wolves bonding to kids, remember? We're supposed to..." The air was too dry. How could she explain when she could barely breathe? "We're supposed to learn to deal with hormones on our own first. Glimmer's changing me from the inside out. I want like a wolf." The last words came out in a strangled cry.

Shaun wrapped his arms around her, stroking her back while he listened. "Wolves can't say yes," Georgia whispered. She leaned closer, inhaling his scent, fighting the urge to put her lips against his throat. "So they say no by shoving and biting. I want this, I want _you_ , but not--not like--"

"Not like a wolf?" he asked.

Georgia shook her head. "Not like this. Not mindlessly." Her shoulders and stomach heaved, rejecting the thoughts that were in conflict with her body's demands. "Not the first time."

"The first time, huh?"

"Maybe not ever." A knot of pain constricted her chest. "I love her so much," she said softly, as if sharing a deep secret. "That doesn't mean I want to be like her."

"Hey, it's not like you want to be like me, either." Shaun put his hands on her hips, almost managing not to caress the bones with his thumbs, and half-lifted, half-pushed her off his lap. Georgia scrambled backwards, breaking all physical contact, and sat cross-legged at the foot of his bed, putting her head in her hands. Shaun clasped his own hands in his lap, making sure to keep them to himself.

Glimmer, who'd retreated to lie across the doorway, stood and came back to Georgia's side, resting her head on her human sister's thigh. "And then there's that," Shaun said, as Georgia curled further forward, leaning against her wolf's solid presence. "You know I love you too, Glimmer, and I eat and sleep and shower around you, but there's limits."

Georgia laughed into Glimmer's ruff, a bit of tension easing out of her back. "There's that," she agreed. "If only that were our biggest concern."

"Guess we've got a lot to hash out," he replied, mashing his hand against his eyes. "I'm gonna get some water. Want anything?"

"Yes." She craned her neck to look at up at him. "Coke. Thanks."

Shaun slid off the bed and straighted up. "Think I'll pass inspection if a parental unit comes home?" Georgia gave him a blank stare, which he interpreted through her sunglasses with the ease of a decade's practice. "I mean, do I look like I had a hot girl grinding on my lap a minute ago?"

She lobbed a pillow at him. "Now is _not_ the time to get me to check you for a visible boner."

"You sure?" He flashed her his familiar cocky smile--a performance, but one he knew she loved. It didn't hide the anxious love in his eyes, and the combination ripped the breath out of her lungs. She tightened her grip on Glimmer; as long as she was holding onto her wolf, she couldn't reach for him.

"Very sure," she said, once she'd inhaled. "Don't be an asshole."

**********

Shaun was back in under five minutes, a glass of water in one hand and a chilled Coke in the other.

Georgia accepted the Coke, opened it, and downed some to steady her nerves. Then she said, "If we do this, we can't let anyone know."

"Well, yeah. Last I heard, fucking your sibling isn't a great way to win friends and influence people." He said the last with a deadpan impersonation of their father; it was one of the pre-Rising sayings Michael Mason had carried forward, always delivered with a joking twinkle in his eye.

Georgia laughed, the way Shaun had intended, but it was sharp and brief. "Very true. But there's..." She trailed off. Shaun sat down and put his arms around her, bracing her for what he knew she had to at least try to say. "But Glimmer..."

"Is gonna go into heat soon," he filled in, when she didn't continue. Georgia nodded, pressing her face against his chest. "Yeah, I know." He kissed her forehead awkwardly. "I've thought about that, trust me."

She reached past him to set her drink down. "Tell me what you think."

His breath caught, a sudden movement under her cheek. "What I thought was, I'm in love with my sister and I can't let her know. Not ever. But I thought, 'what if?' too. I thought about how if by some freak miracle you felt the same way, she'd still go into heat, and you'd still wind up sleeping with someone else. Every year, maybe different people every time. And I'd be jealous, probably." It was his turn to fall silent, and Georgia waited; there was nothing in what he'd said that she could answer or deny. "But if you loved me, I think it'd be okay," he whispered. "Wolf-heat doesn't last that long. That leaves the _rest_ of the year."

"I don't want anyone but you."

"I know." Shaun's grip on her tightened, and despite the tremulous emotion flooding between them, he spoke with an easy confidence that was worlds away from where his mind had been only minutes before. Then he stiffened with realization--Georgia felt it in the small of his back, where her forearms were crossed behind him--and shook his head. "I know," he repeated, and this time there was wonder in it.

"They talked to me a lot about it the last time I visited the Wolfhall, because it probably _will_ happen soon." She took a deep breath, glancing at Glimmer. The wolf's exasperation was gone, leaving worry. Georgia touched her mind, trying to reassure her, taking in Glimmer's feelings.

_Her sister and her sister's not-mate were sad and joyful and afraid--_

\--for reasons the wolf could no more wrap her mind around than she could spin a spider's web. Georgia hugged Shaun tighter and then let go, bending down to twine her arms around Glimmer's neck. "We're okay," she murmured, burying her fingers in the soft silver ruff and breathing slowly for all of their sakes. She turned her head and addressed Shaun.

"They tried to be all subtle and grownup about it, but it was pretty horrible." She laughed, without real amusement. "They talk to so many more boys than girls, and either way, they usually have this talk with people older than us. Telling guys almost out of high school that maybe they should start experimenting with anal sex, no matter how straight they are, is a lot different from telling a fifteen-year-old girl that she should get rid of her virginity ASAP and look into getting some experience with rough sex."

Shaun boggled. "They said that?"

"No, but they would've saved a lot of time if they had." Her nose wrinkled with irritation. "It was obvious five minutes in that that's what they _meant_. And then they decided I needed to be convinced, because if I was so obviously bored I must not believe them." She hesitated and rested her cheek against Glimmer's muzzle. Her wolf licked her jaw affectionately. "I should've hidden the boredom better. They showed me pictures--mostly of guys a day or two after their sisters had open matings."

Shaun couldn't suppress his shudder. Open matings were the source of most of the wild stories about wolf-induced orgies and injuries--the stories people who'd never even met a wolf loved to share. The stories were exaggerated, but in some ways were too accurate for comfort. If a large enough pack was involved, there were usually wolfless observers with guns present, in case a man or a wolf died and needed a quick bullet to the brain before an even more mindless hunger took over.

Georgia felt his response and sat up slowly. "Did you think about that too?"

"Yeah. Of course." He closed his eyes, then looked at her again before she had to press him. "And thinking about you like that scares the living hell out of me. I've seen pictures too. But being scared for you doesn't mean it'd change how I feel about you."

"You can't know that," she said, very softly. Glimmer whimpered, sharing her sister's otherwise-hidden pang of distress.

"Guess not," Shaun conceded after a moment. "Maybe I can't _know_. But I'm as sure as I can be until it happens. And I _do_ know that nothing can ever make me not love you."

"Well, she won't actually mate the first couple of times she goes into heat. And when she does start, there doesn't ever have to be an open mating. It's usually queen bitches who have them." Georgia stroked Glimmer's ears, still aiming for reassurance. "She'll probably have simpler needs. Maybe she'll even choose a steady mate. Think you'd like that, sweetheart?" she added, thinking the question too: _One male to sing with, to be yours, to sire your puppies?_ But she tempered it with the thought of Glimmer's choice-- _You don't have to want what I'd want_ , said without words, and without any way of ever explaining _in_ words how she'd conveyed it.

And Glimmer gave her back nothing but love.

"George," Shaun said. When she looked up, he laid a hand on Glimmer's head, scritching behind her jaw. He touched Georgia's face with the other hand, drew her closer, and kissed her--still awkward with inexperience, but with no uncertainty at all.

Georgia leaned into the kiss, and Glimmer yipped contently, shoving her whole body against their legs and echoing what Georgia had thought into _her_ mind.

 _One to sing with, to be yours._ Satisfaction brightened Glimmer's response as she turned it back on her human sister, in feelings rather than words. _Your own mate._

**********

Georgia had spent so long trying to hide or suppress her feelings for Shaun that it took her another two days to realize that Glimmer's heat was coming on--and that it had already been encroaching when she and Shaun had had their revelatory conversation.

That second morning, she woke up early from a dream that faded immediately, leaving only the awareness of how intensely sexual it had been. Still tired, she got up long enough to use the bathroom and rinse her mouth before tumbling back into bed, hoping to recapture the dream of Shaun's hands and lips on her, of his body melding seamlessly with hers.

She drifted back into a twilight state, not asleep but almost dreaming. In that warm haze she was only faintly aware of where she was, or how she was rubbing her hands over and then between her thighs, searching for the pleasure she'd been so close to in the dream.

Shaun cracked their connecting door open and said quietly, "George? I heard you moving around. You awake?"

"Come here," she replied, not committing to _yes_ or _no_ on the "awake" question. She didn't want to be awake, not with that dream calling her down. But--she realized she was smiling when she felt the smile widen--things were different now. Dreams weren't the only place she could have her brother the way she wanted him.

He sat on the bed beside her, so she fished one hand up from under the blankets. Fumbling in the dark, Shaun took it in his, stroking his thumb across the backs of her knuckles.

Electric desire spilled down her arm, down her spine, flaring beneath her other hand--the hand that was still working steadily between her legs. She was no stranger to getting herself off, but with Shaun there, _touching_ her while she touched herself, her instincts and hormones were performing a duet like nothing she'd ever experienced.

Shaun twitched, breath catching audibly as he felt the slight motion of the bedsprings. "Are you masturbating?"

"Thinking about you," Georgia whispered back. "Kiss me?"

He leaned down and kissed her without hesitation. His lips were a cool contrast to the fire tearing through her body, and his eagerness made her need spike. She orgasmed almost instantly, a vibrant surge of pleasure and tingling awareness of Shaun's hand on hers, of his weight pressing down on her chest while he explored her mouth. But the rush of it did nothing to ease the arousal gnawing into her thoughts, leaving her incapable of thinking past the _want_ that was pooling in her belly and making every muscle ache.

It wasn't enough.

She freed her other hand from under the covers and reached for Shaun, twining her arms around him. It was easy to guide him fully on top of her, where he stayed for a few ecstatic heartbeats, his erection pushing hard against her body, his tongue toying sweetly with hers. It still wasn't enough, but it was better. They were on the right track. She moaned into his kiss, pressing her hips up, spreading her legs for him. The blanket kept them from getting any closer, but the bliss of his weight on her prevented her from thinking clearly enough to solve the problem. A savage noise of frustration twisted in her throat; Glimmer was whining in the back of her mind, resonating with frustration of her own.

With palpable reluctance, Shaun peeled himself off her. "You said you didn't want it like this."

Georgia remembered saying that, although she couldn't fathom why such stupid words had ever come out of her mouth. The blanket was still in the way, but Shaun's hands were still on her body, and she could barely imagine _not_ wanting it like this, not wanting him immediately and ferociously, _now-now-now_.

His failure to move, to distract her from the way her nightclothes were plastered to her skin with sweat and need, piled irritation on top of her arousal. She slapped his hands away with a snarl, forced herself to sit up and start trying to reconstruct words.

The first thing she managed to say tore away her confusion, jarring her into awareness of herself and just how badly messed up she was. "Glimmer's in heat," she said.

Lifting her head took an eternity, but finally she was looking into Shaun's eyes, pitifully grateful for the darkness that hid her expression from him while revealing his face to her. "She's in heat," she repeated, queasy. "You have to...have to get away from me."

"George--"

"Please. Tell Mom and Dad. Make them leave. I can't stand the idea of them being here." She'd gotten the flow of words started, but they came slowly, clogged in her throat.

"Do you want me to stay?" he asked, and something inside her chest creaked and burned, because "want" was a travesty compared to what was building under her skin.

"No." She found herself clinging to his hands; she couldn't remember how to let go. "Not like this."

"Not the first time?" Shaun echoed what she'd said to him only two days earlier.

"Yeah. Exactly." She tried to loosen her grip on him. "Make me let go." He drew a breath to answer, and she said, desperately, _"Please."_

"Okay." And here, being siblings helped--he'd broken her grip a thousand times or more, knew how to twist his wrists and break free. "Where's Glimmer now?"

"The back yard." Georgia sucked in a heavy breath. "She's so hungry. Can you give her some meat?"

"Yeah, of course."

"And call the Wolfhall. Don't let Mom or Dad do it. Please--"

"George, I get it." The gentleness in Shaun's voice rendered it nearly unrecognizable--or was it the way her senses were distorting? "It's okay," he said. "I'll call and they'll send Angelique or someone over. We won't leave until they get here."

"I do want you to stay." Her own voice was small and even less familiar. "I want to beg you not to leave. But I can't trust anything I want right now."

He froze. "But--" he began, and then cut himself off so ruthlessly that even in her muddled state, Georgia guessed what he'd been about to ask.

With everything she had, she focused on what she said next. "You can trust how I feel about you. I think this--Glimmer--her heat coming on is what made my hormones go ballistic. Why I freaked out the other day. But I've wanted you for a long time. It has nothing to do with her."

The strain of Shaun's alarm eased. "We don't have to talk about it now," he said.

Warily, she put a hand on his bicep, ready to jerk back if her fingers tried to latch on. "I love you every way too. And I have every intention of jumping your bones. But I want it to be _me_ doing it."

"It's a date."

**********

One phone call and an hour later, Angelique Takayama was on their doorstep, had taken a blood test to get inside, and was waiting with barely-veiled impatience for Shaun and his parents to leave before she went to check on Georgia. That was how Shaun discovered that the Masons had had the foresight to plan for Glimmer's first heat: it took them a few minutes to pack, same as it did him, but they already knew where they were taking him for the next few days. Stacy had an expedition in mind that she could legally take Shaun on, so he had to grudgingly admit to himself that they'd even accounted for trying to distract him while he and Georgia were separated for the first time since immediately after she'd bonded with Glimmer.

Georgia had told him to leave. And while she and Angelique hadn't formed a deep relationship during the month she'd lived at the Wolfhall with the Takayamas, Angelique had enough of Georgia's trust on pack matters that Shaun had to trust her too.

It didn't keep him from feeling sick to leave her and Glimmer behind.

**********

During the four days he and their parents were away, Georgia sent him a handful of short emails, which arrived at increasingly-erratic times.

 _"I feel like hell,"_ was all one said. Others were harder to read: _"I need to talk to you, but I can't talk about this,"_ and, most painfully, _"I haven't felt this alone since Glimmer chose me."_

 _"I can call you,"_ Shaun wrote back--but only once, because her reply to that was only two words.

_"Please don't."_

**********

Even after it was over, once they were all home together, Georgia wouldn't say much about it to Shaun at first. Her weight had plummeted, although Angelique assured Michael and Stacy that she'd made sure Georgia ate.

Worse, Georgia didn't touch Shaun at all for over a day--something that had _never_ happened before, not even during their worst fights. That first night home, when he reached out to touch her arm, she shook her head and said, "I know how this sounds, but I promise it's not you. I need some time."

But the second night, when he came to say goodnight, she called him over to her bed the way she had the morning Glimmer's heat had started, and pulled him down beside her. "Can you sleep here?" she whispered, after he was already lying down. "Just sleep? Please?"

"Sure," Shaun said, appalled by the uncertainty in her voice. "You know I will."

She folded herself against him, shaking. Hours passed before she said anything else, at least aloud; he could tell when she was communicating with Glimmer from the way her body shifted against him and the wolf stirred at their feet.

Finally Georgia said, "It didn't feel good." She was talking into his shoulder, words muffled. "There are all those _burning_ and _fire_ metaphors for desire, and how you make me feel makes them make sense. I thought wolf-heat would be kind of like that."

"But it's not?" he asked, when she fell silent again.

"It's like being set on fire from the inside out. I lost my mind. I really did."

She didn't say _I missed you_ or _I wanted you here_ , but she clung to him for the rest of the night.

**********

I feel like I need a whole new calendar for this. Like my whole life divides into before Glimmer went into heat and now.

I can't even imagine feeling normal again after this.

I can't believe I'm writing this down. And I write everything down! Almost everything. And it's not like Shaun doesn't know this is happening to me.

Angelique made me eat an hour ago. I wanted to puke up every bite. And now thinking about food is nauseating, but I'm already so hungry again.

As soon as Shaun and Mom and Dad left yesterday, A. came up to my room and gave me three sex toys. I don't know if I blushed. I was burning up. I don't know if I blushed when I used them, either. I don't think I did.

I know what having an orgasm feels like, so I'm positive I haven't had them with any of these things. I keep thinking they're not helping, but then I can't stand it and I grab one and put it inside me and I scream. I think I scream. My throat hurts. But right now everything hurts.

Two days ago I was so glad that Glimmer won't be actually mating for another couple of years. I was so scared of her going into heat, but I thought, "at least she won't be mating".

I'd give anything for her to be mating right now. Anything. And so would she. My poor girl, she's so frustrated. She doesn't understand.

I started writing this as soon as I got out of the shower. I kept it ice cold. My hands are still numb, but I'm already sweating through my clothes. 

I'm wearing my softest pajamas and my skin feels like it's being rubbed off. I can feel the sheets' threads on my skin.

...I could just write "I WANT" a thousand times in a row. That's all any of this is. Wanting. Trying to scream with my fingers instead of my mouth.

The things I'm imagining being done to me make me feel sick. I'm writing and writing this, trying not to think about it, but I can't stop. I'm trying so hard to stop imagining it, and I know as soon as I stop writing I'm going to go get one of those toys and sweat and scream and it's so awful.

I just want to feel normal again. I need someone to make this feeling stop, because I can't. And I can't keep writing this forever. It's not helping anymore.

 

[handwritten entry from Georgia and Shaun Mason's shared paper journal, dated the second day of Glimmer's first heat]

 

**********

> _[GAP: Another week or so later, our leads have the house to themselves for the day and are feeling more ready to pick up where they left off.]_

**********

"Is this wrong?" Shaun whispered across her lips, the barest shadow of contact.

"Do you care if it is?" Georgia whispered back.

"Only if you do."

"I don't think anything between us could ever be wrong." She kissed him as tenderly as she could, which wasn't very tender at all. Not then. "But I have an animal in my head. I'm amoral, remember? Barely human." Bitterness sparked in her voice.

"Fuck everyone who spouts that bullshit," Shaun spat.

"You know, I don't think I will. I think I'll fuck _you_ ," she said, trying to lighten both of their moods. "There's no reason not to, is there? Neither of us has ever been with anyone else, so we don't need to get tested for anything."

"And you definitely can't get pregnant, right?"

Glimmer, catching the gist of his question through Georgia, pressed her nose right between Georgia's legs and snuffled. Georgia was startled enough to jump at the contact, but certainty immediately seeped into her from Glimmer's senses, an assurance of _no cubs if there's mating, not now, not ready to conceive_.

"There, it's safe," Georgia said. "My contraceptive implant's working fine, so I'm not remotely fertile. Glimmer would know if I were."

"'Safe'," he echoed, and his gaze dropped to her body for just a heartbeat before he dragged it back to her face.

"Hey." She cupped a hand against his cheek. "It's okay. Look at me if you want."

"'If', she says." Shaun rolled his eyes, but he looked--and looking became touching, became his hands under her shirt, then her shirt on the floor. "You're sure you're ready?"

"If you are." She reached out to stroke Glimmer's head. "We need some humans-only time, please."

Understanding and agreement flowed in response. Glimmer licked her and Shaun affectionately before loping out of the room.

Shaun got up to shut the door behind the wolf. By the time he turned back, Georgia was lying on his bed, looking at him with parted lips and a hunger he could no more question than his own need to breathe. He almost tripped in his haste to get back to her, making her laugh while she reached up for him.

Piece by piece, the rest of their clothing joined her discarded shirt while they fumbled and caressed and explored. It was thrilling to discover how smoothly his cock slid back and forth between her thighs once they were both naked; she was as wet with desire as he was hard. Shaun kept rubbing himself against her until she bit her lip and instinctively bucked her hips as he thrust--and without warning, the very tip of his cock pressed into her.

They both froze. Georgia stared up into Shaun's eyes, as wide and stunned as hers, and watched his mouth fall open in surprise. It took her a dazed moment to realize the low noise she was hearing was coming from her own throat, not his--a whimper at the deepest edge of her voice.

It took real concentration to find words. "Do it," she said. She lifted her head, bumping her nose against his with a playfulness that softened the demand. "Put it in me." She was trembling harder and harder, almost feverish; every word she managed heightened her excitement. "All the way," she whispered, spreading her legs further to encourage him. "Right inside me, Shaun, _please_."

Shaun obeyed, pushing in and sinking down on her, eyes rolling back. Satisfaction made her bare her teeth in what Shaun always referred to as "one of her wolf-smiles". It was _her body_ putting that slack look on his face--the shocked pleasure of his body being subsumed in hers.

His eyes refocused with obvious effort. "Are you okay?" He was panting and quivering, but otherwise motionless as he touched her temple with gentle fingertips.

"I'm fine." Georgia shut her own eyes, processing her body's signals. There was no pain--not that she'd expected any after how thoroughly she'd made use of the sex toys Angelique had provided to help her endure Glimmer's heat--only a dull twinge from the sudden deep penetration, and the elation of having Shaun inside her was quickly washing that away. "Probably we should've eased into it a little more slowly, but I'm okay." She laced her fingers behind his neck and pulled him closer, bringing their foreheads together. "And trust me, I didn't want to wait another second."

Shaun nodded and moved again, forcing himself to thrust slowly. Georgia laughed, breath soft and warm on his lips, and arched up so her breasts pressed against his chest. This time the choked, desperate sound she heard was unquestionably his, even before she murmured, "I want this as badly as you do. I want _you_." He shuddered violently against her--inside her--clutching her against him with a strength that made her blood sing.

He didn't last long, between his nerves and her voice and the unfamiliar, shattering ecstasy. Afterwards, without withdrawing, he reached between their bodies and stroked her, taking cues from her gasps and nods, from the way she put her fingers on top of his to guide his caresses.

His touch made her hips rock and her breathing catch with sheer pleasure, but eventually she pushed his hand gently away.

"That feels good, but let's try it again later," she said.

He frowned in consternation. "I didn't make you come."

"Oh, you will." Georgia kissed him, trying to make it light and soothing. "Unless this is a one-time thing and you didn't tell me."

"Not funny," Shaun muttered.

"So sometime that isn't now, I'll teach you how to get me off. Right now, make with the snuggling." She twined her fingers through his hair. "Let me enjoy how shell-shocked and starry-eyed you look."

Color flowed into his cheeks. "Starry-eyed?"

She kissed the corner of his mouth and along his jaw until she reached his ear. "Mm-hmm. And it's a fantastic look on you. It makes me want you even more."


	4. 2034 - Age 16

> _[GAP: We've jumped a year, and Glimmer is going into heat for the second time.]_

**********  
 **2034 - Age 16**  
**********

"I'm _not_ leaving her alone in the house," Shaun said, more forcefully than he'd intended.

Michael Mason sighed. His let's-be-reasonable face was firmly in place, as if he were arguing grades with a challenging student rather than trying to talk one of his children out of keeping the other company while she suffered through a deeply unpleasant experience. "There's nothing you can do for her."

"Wrong," Shaun snapped back, and for that instant the truth was out there between them-- _I can give her something to fuck_ \--before Shaun painted it over with a lesser one. "I can be here so she knows she's not alone," he said. "I probably can't make her eat, but I can remind her to stay hydrated. I can toss her in the shower once in a while."

Michael's lip curled minutely, an expression unfamiliar enough to throw Shaun off his list. Unfamiliar, and undecipherable. Shaun frowned. "You didn't see her last time, Dad. When it was over."

Neither parent had seen Georgia in the immediate aftermath of Glimmer's first heat. Neither of them had seen the pillow she'd had in the bathroom with her, damp and ripped from how she'd bitten at and screamed into it. Neither had seen the long scratches all over her upper arms where she'd clawed at herself; the blood was gone, safely washed and bleached away before she let Shaun in, but the gouges had been slow to heal, and when they had, they'd healed into scars. Shaun wasn't even sure their parents had laid eyes on Georgia's bare arms since then.

"Do you think Georgia _wanted_ you to see her like that?"

It should have been dangerous territory--the thought of her consumed with voracious lust, disheveled and wrecked with it. It wasn't. Her desire for _Shaun_ , or even just for sex, plain and simple, was one thing, a thing Shaun had an understandable taste for. Glimmer's heat searing her from the bones out was something very different.

"No," he said bluntly. "Obviously. She didn't want to _be_ like that. But that doesn't mean she wanted to be alone. You guys dragged me out last time, and she said it was okay because she didn't know, and she was embarrassed. But it wasn't okay. Screw embarrassment, Dad. I said I'm not leaving her alone here, and I mean it."

"Let me rephrase that. You _shouldn't_ see her that way, son."

Shaun's eyes hardened. "Because she's my sister."

"Precisely."

Father and son studied each other, and then Shaun said, quietly, so Michael couldn't accuse him of being argumentative, "Better me than you. And better either of us than Mom."

"Georgia isn't in control of herself right now."

"What the heck are you thinking, Dad? You think, what, I'm gonna take advantage of her?" Shaun snarled the question. "You think I'll see my sister desperate to get laid and stop thinking with anything but my dick?"

"No call to be crude. We raised you with a better vocabulary than that."

"I'm just saying what I'm pretty sure you're thinking. And you're wrong." Shaun took a weak stab at a smile, and almost laughed at the unbidden thought of how irritated Stacy would be if he ever smiled that way on camera. "Try dragging me out if you want, but Glimmer's on my side. _She_ thinks I should stay."

There was another, briefer silence, and then Shaun said, "You and Mom should probably get going."

**********

> _[GAP: In an ideal world where I'd quilted all the pieces of this story together, there'd be some more preparation here before we see how this unfolds.]_

**********

Glimmer's unsatisfied heat lasted three days. Afterwards, Shaun was no more inclined to write about it than Georgia was, and not sure he was any more capable of it. Even without Glimmer directly influencing him, the days and nights blurred into a fevered haze of sex that was almost masochistically futile, or worse, just holding Georgia tight against him when either or both of them found sex impossible, listening to her harsh, pained breathing and trying to help her get comfortable.

He knew there'd been more to it than that, and could reconstruct the hard facts: that they'd slept erratically, when Glimmer fell asleep; that Georgia had showered more often than she'd eaten, although she drank every glass of water he gave her without protest. That they'd gone into the fenced yard to see Glimmer several times each day, and unlike Georgia, the wolf had a ferocious appetite, gulping down every scrap of poultry they gave her.

But the dominant emotion saturating Shaun's memory was Georgia's delirious misery, punctuated by fragmented memories in such sharp focus he doubted he could forget them if he tried.

*

_("I want to hold off as long as we can," Georgia said, once Angelique had been by to check on her and they knew they'd be alone until evening. "Stopping's going to be harder than not starting. I think."_

_"Holding off" meant nearly an hour went by before they started fucking.)_

*

_(The first time, she told him to pin her wrists to keep from scratching him or herself. They both looked at the faint scarring on her upper arms from where she'd clawed at herself during Glimmer's first heat, and he nodded and kept a firm grip on her._

_Each subsequent time, he held her down by her forearms instead, where the layers of bruises from his fingers would be easier to hide under long sleeves.)_

*

_("Sleep," Shaun murmured, smoothing her bangs off her face with the flat of his hand, then wiping sweat from her forehead with the backs of his fingers. Georgia snarled at him wearily, her body twisting against his as if she could escape what was burning inside her marrow._

_"I can't," she said. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't get some rest."_

_"Does having me here still help?" He'd fucked her four times that first day, for longer each time, but after his last ejaculation, his body had refused to be coaxed into another erection, a fact Shaun found more embarrassing than he liked to admit--although the admission had gotten a genuine smile out of Georgia for the first time all day as she'd replied, "You gave me everything you had."_

_"It helps a lot," she said now, but she shook her head when he silently offered her his fingers; they'd already established that he could only barely take the edge off with his fingers or his mouth or the sex toys she still had._

_"Then I'll stay."_

_Her answering kiss was so exhausted and grateful that he could have cried.)_

*

_("I need **more** ," she said on the second day, whispering to keep from putting more strain on her abused voice. "But more of what? No idea."_

_"I'll try anything you can think of," Shaun said, caressing her spine._

_Georgia nodded, but her expression was bleak. "My **body** doesn't know what it needs, so it's asking for everything. Harder, faster, deeper, rougher..." A heavy tremor passed through her. "Just...everything.")_

*

_(Neither of them came out and said that he wasn't capable of meeting the unnameable need consuming her. They both knew._

_That last morning alone, before their parents arrived home--after Glimmer's heat had subsided enough that she came inside, and the three of them had slept piled together in Georgia's bed the way they had when Glimmer was a puppy--Shaun said, "When a trellwolf mates, the heat lasts less than a day, doesn't it?"_

_There was a tight, wretched silence before Georgia said, "Yes.")_

**********

Calling their parents to confirm that Glimmer's heat was over and say they could come home was one of the hardest calls Shaun had ever made. The words were innocuous--"yeah, Glimmer's back to normal and George is feeling better"--but Stacy and Michael were Georgia's biggest stressors, and he was summoning them home while she was still raw and vulnerable, every emotional nerve laid bare.

He called Angelique next, confirmed that George and Glimmer had both slept and eaten and started to feel more like themselves.

And then, bellies full of eggs and turkey bacon and fruit--the first real _meal_ Georgia had managed to get down since the heat had begun--the two of them went back to bed, where Glimmer was snoring softly, paws twitching as she hunted in her dreams.

"Thanks," Georgia said once they'd settled, twined tightly back in each other's arms. It was exactly where they'd spent most of the past three days, but wholly different: Georgia's skin was comfortably warm, not the sickly combination of elevated body heat slicked over with cold sweat. She pulled Shaun in against her, guiding his head to her shoulder. "I know that sucked for you."

Shaun rolled possible answers around on his tongue-- _You would've done it for me_ and _Not as much as it sucked for you_ \--and settled on, "At least now we know," keeping his voice gentle.

"Now we know," she echoed. "But it really did help." She cupped a hand to his cheek, tilted his head back to kiss his forehead. "I was so alone last time. When Glimmer's in heat, she's inescapable, but she's not _with_ me." Her lips tightened with frustration. "It's been a year and I still don't have the right words for it. But it's all the worst parts of being connected, and with you gone too... I needed you."

She was being so careful as she spoke, but the words still felt like a blow. "I would've stayed."

"I know." Georgia kissed his mouth quickly, reassuring. "God, I know you would have. But then we would've had sex, and it would've been a shitty excuse for our first time."

Shaun wrinkled his nose. "I think you mean 'first twenty times, give or take'."

"Is that all it was this time?"

_"All--?"_ He scowled at her. "Lesser men would've had heart attacks fucking you that much."

"Older men, anyway," she said, arch and passably lascivious, as if they weren't both burned out on sex.

At their feet, Glimmer whined in her sleep and rolled over, tugging the bedclothes taut around them. Georgia glanced to the foot of the bed, and the teasing note left her voice. "Sometimes I still half expect her to react to the words I'm saying. Talking about how terrible I felt because of the bond makes me feel like I'm saying horrible stuff about _her_."

"But all she feels is how much you love her," Shaun said.

The tenderness that softened Georgia's face at the thought of her connection to Glimmer still threw Shaun sometimes. It wasn't an expression he ever would have imagined her wearing before Glimmer had claimed her. But Georgia's answer was about him, not Glimmer: "I still wish you could feel it too. I don't want to share thoughts with you--if your brain's half as noisy as mine, we'd make each other crazy in no time--but I wish you could feel how I love you."

"Right back at you." He nestled back down into her embrace, breathing the smell of her.

Her room was dim, but not dark enough that Shaun could ignore the bruises tracking around her forearm when he took her wrist and brought her hand up to his mouth. He shifted his grip and kissed along them. "Does it hurt?"

"Not much. They'll probably take a while to go away, but I think they'll only hurt if someone grabs me there." She shrugged. "And who's going to do that but you?" No one, and they both knew it; it had been months since Stacy had touched Georgia at all, and she would have been the only other candidate. "We shouldn't be together when Mom and Dad get home."

"We'll hear the garage. I can be in my own room by the time they get inside."

"No," Georgia said. "I mean even downstairs, we shouldn't be together in front of them right away." She swallowed hard. "I'm going to have some trouble moving normally, I think."

"You're the one who implied _twenty times_ wasn't enough a few minutes ago."

"Jerk." But she rewarded his teasing with a faint smile. "Look, even if they assume it's not true, I'd rather not have them even _thinking_ about us--" She gestured at how they were tangled together "--like this."

"Dad thought it," Shaun said, and immediately wished he could call the words back. Georgia froze against him, breath suddenly shallow; an instant later, Glimmer lifted her head with a perplexed _whuff_.


	5. 2035 - Age 17

> _[GAP: Ahead of Glimmer's next heat, Georgia concludes that the whole experience will be easier on all of them if she takes Glimmer back to the Wolfhall for it and lets her have a first actual mating, which according to centuries of tradition means that Georgia needs to be involved too. In most areas of her life, as in the series canon, she's not inclined to believe that something has to be done a certain way just because it's **always** been done that way, but having a wolf-sister and being part of the pack sense, even if only dimly, makes it difficult for her to even think about questioning a lot of their traditions.]_
> 
> _[Sometime during the following year, this extremely blunt conversation happens.]_

**********  
 **2035 - Age 17**  
**********

"Tell me what to do," Shaun said, crushing Georgia's curls under his cheek. "I'm not gonna freak out over this. We've had loads of time to think about it." He swallowed roughly over the dryness in his throat.

"Yes, we have." Georgia's tone indicated that she'd not only thought about it but reached a conclusion. Shaun made a questioning sound. "There is something I need from you."

"What?"

She pulled away, tilting her head back to see him. Her expression betrayed nothing as she said, "We need to do anal. A lot of it."

Shaun stared. "Uh...I'm not opposed, but unpack that." He gave her a lopsided grin. "I assume you mean me doing you, not that you're suddenly in the mood to give my butt some extra love."

"We both know what Glimmer mating means for me," Georgia said. "But I still get to make some choices, and I've decided I'm not letting anyone but you fuck me vaginally." Tension was ratcheting up in her shoulders. "I don't know how much difference that makes to you, and I know nobody's going to get me pregnant, but anyone I'm with will be used to doing it to a man anyway--"

"George." Shaun tugged her back into his arms. "If it makes a difference to you, you don't have to justify it."

She pressed her face against his chest, inhaling deeply. "I don't want anybody but you inside me that way," she said. "I don't want anyone but you to kiss me, or make me come." The rigidity of her spine made Shaun's back ache in sympathy. "I don't know if I can keep from coming. I have no idea."

"You probably won't have much control over that," Shaun agreed. "Look, I'm never gonna like the thought of other people having sex with you, but it's not gonna change anything between us. I want you to do whatever you figure'll make it suck least for you. _That's_ what matters to me."

**********

> _[GAP: Just a small skip ahead right now.]_

**********

Over their parents' protests, Shaun drove Georgia and Glimmer to the Wolfhall when full-blown heat was only a few hours away. Both he and Georgia had taken the previous day off school, once Georgia was sure it was on the verge of happening; she'd notified the Wolfhall, and left it to them to make preparations.

"What'll they do?" Shaun had asked once she ended the call.

Georgia had dropped onto the couch beside him so he could see the notes she'd taken on her PDA. "Since we haven't been there since before Glimmer's pheromones started going nuts, none of the males will be specifically psyched up to get at her. They've got some candidates in mind, on the off chance the mating takes. And they'll get a room and a mating yard ready, but honestly, that'll take them like maybe half an hour."

"Did they give you a number?"

"Of 'candidates'?" She'd shaken her head, running her fingers fitfully through her curls. "No. They probably didn't want to freak me out. Which would mean they're banking on me needing it too badly to freak out when it's all about to happen."

Now, Shaun pulled the car into a parking space outside the Wolfhall, reflexively checking all their mirrors and the motion sensors as if they were in an unsecured area, rather than safe within the Wolfhall's perimeter. "How're you doing?" he asked, meeting Georgia's gaze in the rearview mirror. He could barely see her eyes through her sunglasses, but that wouldn't keep her from seeing the love and worry in his.

Her fingers did an anxious dance on her thigh. "Fine. As close to fine as possible under the circumstances. I feel like I haven't gotten off in months." She moistened her lips, gave him a self-deprecating smile; only a few hours earlier he'd been fucking her against his bedroom wall, giving her a short reprieve from the heavy fog of _need_ that had started closing back in almost as soon as he'd stopped.

She looked at him directly instead of in the mirror. There was too much risk of being seen for her to hug him--in the state she was in, there was no chance of it looking sisterly--but she took his hand in a death grip. "I don't want this," she said, so simply it almost hid her distress.

"I know." He squeezed her fingers back. "Want me to promise you out loud again?"

"Can't hurt."

Shaun took a moment to choose his words; in either of the family vehicles, there was always the chance they were being recorded. In the backseat, Glimmer whined her impatience, giving herself a brisk shake. He turned in his seat and rubbed behind her ears. "Yeah, we know you've gotta get in there. A girl's got needs." Still scratching Glimmer's head, he looked back at Georgia. "Nothing that happens in there, nothing it makes you feel, can change anything about how I see you. I promise."

Her smile warmed. "I know."

"I know you know." Shaun inhaled deeply, in unplanned, flawless unison with her. "Ready to go in?"

"Yes."

Halfway between the car and the main entrance, with Glimmer racing back and forth wildly, Georgia's breath caught as she stumbled. Shaun grabbed her upper arm instinctively, then dropped his hand to the small of her back. A faint, purely animal whine escaped her as she jerked away, her spine already arching at the contact.

"Shit, I'm sorry--" he began.

"Not your fault." Her voice was strangled. "Really not. Glimmer's already high as a kite on the boys' scents all over the place." Georgia breathed rapidly through her mouth, as if she could avoid the smells intoxicating her sister. "I can _smell_ them, I--fuck, I need you to help me. I don't think anyone's going to look at us funny if I react to you touching me. Not right now."

"Got it." Shaun put a careful arm around her shoulders and tried not to respond the way he wanted to the desperate way she leaned into him. "It's okay, George. I've got you."

She nodded, sweat gleaming on her forehead. At such close range, he could see her jaw working as she fought down whatever sounds were coiling in her throat.

Glimmer circled them, yipping and wriggling with frustration. "I know," Georgia told her. "Believe me, I know."

Angelique and Kenji met them at the doorway. Kenji exchanged nods with Georgia, keeping a courteous distances from her, and led Glimmer away without entering the building; while Shaun took his blood test to get in, Angelique helped steady Georgia's hand on the second testing pad, then guided her to a chair inside.

"You're a wreck, Georgia. I told you--"

"To come in the day before, I know." Georgia sagged forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "I would've gotten way less sleep here than I did at home."

"And how much did you get?"

"About three hours. Don't mother me, okay?"

Angelique pursed her lips. "Someone has to," she said. There was an edge to her voice, but the look in her eyes suggested to Shaun that the sharpness wasn't directed at his sister.

Georgia was looking at the floor, not Angelique's eyes. Her answering tone could have drawn blood. "Right. By all means, Angelique, cluck over me before you lead me off to where some goddamn stranger or ten is going to fuck me."

There was a taut silence before Angelique said, "Maybe it matters more than usual now, kiddo." She sighed. "Are numbers that comforting?"

" _Facts_ are comforting." Georgia reached out for Shaun's hand; he took it without hesitation. She shuddered, so clearly wanting to pull him close that he knew Angelique had to see it too.

"All right, then. There are seven males in the yard for Glimmer. But while anything _could_ happen, I've never seen a bitch take more than five. Queens tend to take more in an open mating than other females, but it's Glimmer's first time, and she's likely to lose her head at the possibilities, frankly."

Georgia nodded, not lifting her head. "Theoretically because her instincts tell her that accepting more males increases the chance she'll get pregnant by at least one of them, even though she probably won't. I know the biology."

"Yes." Angelique gave Shaun a searching look. "You might want to leave before I spell this out for her."

"I'm not leaving at all. I know I can't go into the Hall, but I'm gonna wait for them."

"No, you're not," she said. "You're going home." She frowned when Shaun opened his mouth to protest. "I'll drive them back personally as soon as they're ready to leave, and you can fuss over her then. But no, you are _not_ staying here. If you think you can't drive safely, someone'll take you."

Georgia squeezed his hand tightly. "It'll be okay, Shaun," she murmured. She sounded less muddled than she had outside; he guessed it meant Glimmer hadn't had a noseful of male-wolf scent for a few minutes.

Angelique turned her attention back to Georgia. "All right, facts. You're going to be in a room with about eleven people--me, the men whose wolves are with Glimmer, a doctor, and some security. There'll be a female wolf there at all times to smell for blood. Blood means everything stops for testing, even if that means physical intervention. The guys are going to be staring at you, and you're not going to care. The rest of us won't be, but we'll make sure you stay safe and hydrated. And speaking of which--" She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small pill case. "Here. Sedatives and muscle relaxants, if you want either. Or both."

Incredulity was what finally made Georgia look up. _"Sedatives?"_ Angelique nodded. "Are you serious? Do the guys bonded to bitches take those?"

"I'd guess about half of them do," Angelique said evenly.

"They _roofie_ themselves?!"

Angelique grimaced at the choice of words. "We can wrap mating heats in tradition and the nicest-sounding words we can come up with, but there's nothing natural about it for humans, no matter how badly you need it in the moment. So yeah, some people opt to make it suck as little as possible."

Georgia stared at the pill case. "I don't think I can." She took a slow, harsh breath. Her grip tightened even more on Shaun's hand, which was going numb. "I don't want to pretend the bad things about having Glimmer aren't part of the package."

"You can change your mind." Angelique sighed. "Everything else is what you've decided. The guys know not to have vaginal sex with you. They've all been through a few heats, so we--and they--know how they react to it. None of them will be far enough out of their heads to forget your boundaries."

"This is the most ludicrous time to use the word 'boundaries'," Georgia said. "Even if it's technically accurate." She shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "I think I should go in now."

She wobbled when she stood. Angelique took her elbow, steadying her while she slowly let go of Shaun's hand.

He hesitated, then kissed his throbbing fingertips and pressed them to Georgia's forehead. "See you when you get home."

Georgia summoned a smile--one he recognized as a product of their parents' training. He could almost hear their mother's rapid-fire instructions, spoken quietly through clenched teeth: _Smile for the camera. Smile for the folks at home. Smile for anyone who's watching, darling. You never know._

"See you then," she said, and let Angelique lead her away.

**********

Shaun had implicitly agreed to go home and wait, but it took him nearly half an hour to convince himself to leave, in case-- There was nothing after "in case". In case Georgia needed him? In case there was anything he could do to help? She wouldn't, and there wouldn't be.

Once he was finally home, nothing could distract him from the helplessness that made both time and his skin crawl. The closest thing to a distraction was fighting with his mother over whether he had to eat dinner with them, without even the outlet of a shouting match. Stacy only leveled cold eyes at him and said, with the grimness of put-upon mothers everywhere, "You're under our roof, and you'll be civilized enough to show up at the family table."

If _being civilized_ was listening to parental small talk and passing the potatoes while his sister was across the city being fucked by strangers, Shaun wasn't a fan. Eating was an effort in a way no tension or anger could usually make it; he choked down every bite, trying not to worry. And wishing, with every breath, that his parents weren't as aware of it as he was. They might not have as clear a mental picture as he did, but they knew what was happening, and it turned his stomach to know they were thinking about it.

_(They **had** to be thinking about it, more than they were letting on as they ate their chicken and discussed their respective projects. They had to be. The idea that what their daughter was enduring might be barely a blip on their radar was so much worse.)_

**********

> _[GAP: The same year, a few months later.]_

**********

It was Shaun who noticed the deepening cracks in their mother's veneer, just as he'd been the one to first recognize their parents' feelings--or lack thereof--for the two of them. From the day Georgia had brought Glimmer home, mother and daughter had begun avoiding each other more blatantly than before, at least when the cameras weren't looking; now, five years down the road, it was habit so old Georgia hardly thought about it. She could do the math: their parents were both profoundly uncomfortable with Glimmer's presence, but Michael could make a pretense of coping with it.

Stacy couldn't.

It was hard to blame Stacy for the inability, not after Georgia and Shaun had grown up with the story of how she'd been the one to end Phillip's life, and of the amplified Golden retriever who'd infected him. It was only Georgia's refusal to lie to herself that let her admit it was a relief to have a concrete reason to not be in her mother's presence except at mealtimes, or when a family excursion or photo op required it.

**********

Shaun slipped into Georgia's bed far later than usual one night when they were seventeen, hair still wet from his decontamination shower. Georgia and Glimmer made room for him, both half-asleep; he'd been on an out-of-state zombie hunt with their mother that meant hours of driving to get home. Getting home that night at all had meant badgering Stacy into the long drive instead of sleeping in the van or getting a motel room. He was going to owe her something for the privilege of getting to sleep in earshot of Georgia's breathing.

"Hey," he said, settling beside her.

"Hey." Her voice was groggy, so at least she'd managed to doze off despite his absence. Sometimes Glimmer's presence was enough to allow her that much. She pressed her face against his chest in the dark.

Shaun hated to wake her. He debated letting her fall into deeper sleep without further interruption--sleep she needed, because she always did. And she was so warm, even with the usual few inches between their bodies as she burrowed down further into the covers.

Lupine eyes glinted over Georgia's shoulder as Glimmer noticed his indecisiveness and lifted her head. Shaun sighed and squeezed Georgia's arm. "Wake up, George. We need to talk."

Her response was a long time coming, but finally she rolled onto her stomach with a grudging sigh. "Now?"

"Yeah."

She muttered something rude that Shaun pretended not to hear, then sat up. "What?"

"How long has it been since you talked to Mom off-camera?"

It was too dark for Shaun to see Georgia and Glimmer tense in eerie unison, but he felt it in the subtle shift of the bed beneath their weight. "God, I don't know," Georgia said. "A couple weeks? Why?"

"She's not doing so good."

"Is she ever?"

"Worse than usual. Every time I mentioned Glimmer today she looked...I don't know, wild around the eyes or something, and then she'd give me this brittle smile like she was trying to laugh it off." He fell silent, groping for words.

Georgia sighed again. "Say it."

"Be careful," he said. Neither of them added _whatever that means_. Their father was predictable in behavior and otherwise inscrutable. Their mother was neither. Stacy's professional facade was as good as ever, as far as Shaun could tell, but with the cameras off, she was reliable in the way of storms: her children could tell when a strike was imminent, but with no way to know where it would fall, there was nowhere to take shelter except _away from her_.

"I'll try," Georgia agreed. "Thanks for the heads-up. Now can I get back to sleep?"

**********

For another week, nothing unusual happened.

**********

No single thing woke Shaun up. He was simply _awake_ suddenly, disoriented by the abruptness and the noise of an alarm and the light creeping into his room from Georgia's.

Light. _White_ light, dim but unmistakable through the door they'd left ajar.

He was out of bed and in motion with equal abruptness, Georgia's name forming on his lips and dying unspoken at what he saw when he reached the threshold between their rooms: the door to the hallway open, their mother framed in it, hands up and wrists braced together with practiced ease, training a gun and a flashlight on the bed. The bed where Georgia was between the gun and her wolf, where Glimmer snarled soundlessly and hackled behind her, visibly struggling to overcome Georgia's silent but unmistakable command for her to _stay put_.

Georgia's curls and tank top were rumpled and her arm was flung across her bare face--she'd obviously seen the gun first and put herself between Stacy and Glimmer rather than reaching in the opposite direction for her sunglasses. Her face was tight--brutalized--with so much pain that Shaun knew the light had hit her eyes.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, he called for his father, pitching his voice as loudly as he could, as if the alarm--which he was now vaguely aware was only the beeping of Georgia's lock indicating an emergency override and unauthorized access--could drown him out. "Dad! Dad, we need you _right now_!"

Breathe in. Breathe out. Change focus. He tore his eyes off Georgia, off the horrifying sight of how small and hurt she looked, and focused on their mother.

"Mom, what're you doing?"

When Stacy spoke, it was cool and precise and not addressed to him. "Let go of her. Right now."

Which made no sense--not as a way to order Georgia away from Glimmer, and not as a command the wolf would understand or obey. Shaun couldn't tell if Stacy was trying to get Georgia away from what she perceived as a threat--unlikely, he thought cynically--or telling Georgia to get out from between the gun and Glimmer.

But what Stacy meant didn't really matter, because neither Georgia nor Glimmer would leave the other's side in a moment like this.

_"Dad!"_ Shaun yelled again. If he took the few steps back into his room that were necessary for him to lay hands on a gun of his own, anything could happen.

He did the only other thing he could: took the single backwards step that let him grope on a bookshelf and grab a camera. That, at least, couldn't kill someone if he fumbled it and it misfired.

He didn't fumble it. Seconds later the camera was clipped to his ear and set to follow the motion of his head and eyes. "Mom, I'm filming you."

"That's nice, darling." Stacy kept her flinty gaze and her gun trained on the bed, unperturbed by either Shaun's declaration or by her husband's appearance at her elbow a moment later.

"Stacy," Michael Mason asked his wife, matching her calm, "what are you doing?"

"What we should have done years ago."

Shaun looked back at the bed, needing to see Georgia even if it meant preserving the image of her in pain. At least she didn't look afraid, not if you didn't know to look for the tiny tremor in her upper lip or the way her hands were knotted into fists.

"What do you want, Mom?" she asked. "Can I at least get my sunglasses?"

"Of course," Stacy said pleasantly. "As soon as you let go of that beast of yours."

"I'm barely touching her--" Georgia's protest faltered as she realized what her mother was demanding.

Stacy stepped closer, aiming the gun unerringly at Georgia's forehead. "Let her go."

Georgia swallowed visibly. "Shaun?"

"Right here. Still filming."

"What's she doing?"

"She's got her gun trained on your head," Shaun whispered, not trusting his voice. The air in the room felt bitterly cold, but sweat was trickling down his side and beading on Georgia's forehead.

"Let go," Stacy repeated. "Then she can go back and live with her kind, and maybe you can be human again." Her tone was sweet and persuasive until the last few words; a note of skepticism poisoned them.

_Maybe you can be human again,_ Shaun heard. _But probably not._ His stomach churned.

"Mom--" he said.

"Stacy," Michael broke in. "This isn't the way to go about it. We've raised ourselves a pair of stubborn kids, and this, of all things, won't convince her of anything."

"Do you have a better idea?" Stacy demanded, strain cracking through her voice.

"No," he admitted. "But you can't shoot her, dear."

"Can't I?" The bitterness in her laugh turned Shaun's blood cold. Stacy Mason was famous for many things, but she was arguably _best_ known for shooting her firstborn child--the shot that had triggered new avenues of understanding how Kellis-Amberlee was spread.

For the first time, Georgia shuddered.

"Either break the link to her or get out," Stacy spat. "No more animals under my roof." Her mouth curled as if tasting something vile. "No more deviance."

The beam of the flashlight shifted. With it no longer focused straight on her face, Georgia pulled her arm away and squinted up at her mother. Even that tiny bit of light in her eyes made her jaw tighten with fresh pain. "None of that's happened here," she said, unable to keep from offering that token protest.

But that wasn't what Stacy meant, and they all knew it even before her face contorted with fresh contempt. "We're not idiots, Georgia."

"Stacy," Michael said quietly. He touched her shoulder and nodded at Shaun--and the running camera.

An excruciatingly tense moment passed before Stacy flipped the safety on her gun, dropping her arm. "Get out," she said.

"Fine. We will," Shaun replied, before Georgia could. He sidestepped around their parents and joined Georgia and Glimmer on the bed.

"Not you," Stacy said.

Michael interrupted before she could continue. "It's late. We'll all talk about this in the morning, kids. Try to get some sleep." Gripping Stacy's upper arms, he guided her back out of Georgia's bedroom.

The last thing Shaun saw of his parents was a glitter of furious tears in his mother's eyes.

He switched the camera off the instant the door closed, jumped up, and threw the deadbolt that was only meant to be used in emergencies. Clearly this counted. He ducked into his own room and locked his door the same way before coming back to Georgia's bed.

"George...?" Shaun could barely see her face anymore; his eyes hadn't adjusted to the darkness. But he could tell she wasn't moving, except for the labored breathing he could both hear and feel. Glimmer whined behind them, nudging her head between their sides in a desperate bid for comfort.

Shaun wrapped his arms around both of them, fighting to keep his grip gentle, until Georgia whispered, "They know. They know about us."

"Doesn't matter," he muttered back, kissing her forehead roughly. "We'll be fine. I filmed it all, George. We've got leverage. She pulled a _gun_ on you." His voice shook. "She pulled a goddamn gun on you in your own bedroom." Georgia trembled in his embrace, and in that moment, he was sure he could have broken their mother's neck with his bare hands and no hesitation. "I should've been here with you."

"It wouldn't have helped," Georgia replied. She took a deep, slow breath, trying to find the calmness that would let Shaun and Glimmer settle. "But yes, you should have been." There was no criticism in her tone, only a statement of fact. "You should always be with me."

Her kiss caught him off guard. There was a savagery in it that went straight to his bones (and straight to his dick, if he was honest, even though it wasn't a "let's fuck" kind of kiss). "We can go to the Wolfhall," she said. Her voice was as icy as her kiss was hot. "I'm entitled to live there, and they understand _pack_. They'll let us den together. And with your footage we can work out a deal with the Masons."

"Meaning 'blackmail them into covering our living costs'?"

"I assume you're okay with that?"

"She threatened to shoot you," Shaun murmured, pulling back so Georgia could see his face, even if he couldn't see hers. "Right now there isn't much I wouldn't do to them to get you out of here."

"Get _us_ out of here."

"That was implicit," he said.

Beside them, Glimmer uttered a satisfied little _whuff_ that made both humans laugh, glad for any break in the tension still smoldering in the room.

"Does that work for you?" Georgia asked. "What do you want to do?"

"So you know, nothing about this mess is turning me on." Shaun laid a hand over her mouth to forestall her puzzled demand as to what the state of his hormones had to do with anything. "Just, it's not that. But right now what I _want_ to do is pick you up and have obnoxiously loud sex. I want to fuck you up against the door until the house shakes, and then I want us to walk out of here and spit in their faces as we leave."

She picked up his meaning as quickly as if her mind were connected to his, not to Glimmer's. "You want to tell them to go fuck themselves by fucking me? Classy. And a terrible idea."

"Since when is class what I'm known for?" He sighed and pressed their foreheads together, taking the weight of her skull, wishing he could take or share the pain inside it. "How's your head?"

"Migraine city," Georgia said.


	6. 2036 - Age 18

> _[GAP: Kindly imagine some establishing scenes at this point, as Georgia and Shaun get the hell out from under their parents' roof. Think of it as a training montage._
> 
> _A deal is quietly cut in which the official explanation is that they and Glimmer, with Michael and Stacy's approval/permission, relocate to the Wolfhall "so that Georgia and Glimmer can have a stronger pack experience". In practice, this means ongoing financial support and training from Stacy and Michael in exchange for Georgia and Shaun helping to create some ongoing "family" content and the appearance of it all being amicable...and, oh yes, not going public with Shaun's rather damning footage of Stacy pulling a gun on her daughter._
> 
> _They do indeed get their own living space in the semi-communal Wolfhall. They decide to keep one bedroom humans-only and reserve the other one for sleeping in with Glimmer. Shaun grudgingly concedes that, yes, fine, it's probably a bad idea to start referring to the rooms as "the bedroom" and "the sex room", to reduce the chances of accidentally saying anything incriminating in front of anyone else._
> 
> _(Other people's wolves can tell by smell that Georgia and Shaun are having sex, but frankly, they think human sexual relationships are weird and confusing, so there's a certain amount of G &S simply trusting that the wolves will never think it's relevant and should be mentioned.)_
> 
> _Both Shaun and Georgia switch from attending an actual school to much more independent online-based education. That change lets Georgia fast-track her studies, especially now that she doesn't need to devote so much mental/emotional energy to the poor fit of their school or to dealing with their parents._
> 
> _Shaun, on the other hand, immediately starts planning an ongoing series of reports on being a wolfless resident journalist of the Wolfhall and the unique perspective that offers. It's all very Irwiny, of course: LIFE WITH THE APEX PREDATORS and whatnot. By staying in constant headset contact with Georgia, he can even take exploratory ventures into the field (within his license restrictions) with Glimmer, who can relay danger signals to him through Georgia._
> 
> _Some notoriety is gained.]_
> 
> _[And that brings us to Glimmer's first heat after the three of them have settled in as Wolfhall residents.]_

**********  
 **2036 - Age 18**  
**********

"Can I help at all?" Shaun asked.

Georgia shook her head. "Just keep me company."

So he did, as best he could, although she briefly shut both him and Glimmer out of the bathroom while she showered and got herself ready, stealing a few minutes of the most complete privacy available with Glimmer at the back of her mind. She opened the door again once she'd toweled off, letting Glimmer dart in to press against her bare, still-damp legs--but only briefly, with Glimmer bursting with impatience and energy and barely-contained longing.

"Go on," Georgia told her. "It's okay. I'll see you afterwards." _I'll be with you anyway,_ she added, silently and unnecessarily.

Glimmer whined and head-butted Georgia's thigh, nuzzling her, then herded Shaun out of the bedroom and to the door connecting their rooms to the main hallway. Shaun let her out into the corridor, and in her wake the tension in the air eased, if only slightly.

When he rejoined Georgia, she'd already pulled on the dress she'd added to her wardrobe especially "for the occasion", as she'd said to Shaun, her lips twisting wryly on the words. The dress was loose and comfortable, covering most of her upper body while leaving her legs almost entirely naked, and what little skirt there was would easily hitch up around her waist.

Now, dressed for her second _occasion_ , she leaned into him heavily, shivering. "I'm wet already," she said quietly.

"I'm not surprised."

("You can't hold me," she'd whispered the night before, twisting in his arms while he fucked her, trying to take the edge off. "I can't ask for you. They'd almost definitely say no, and if you held me everyone there would know about us."

Shaun had desperately wanted to respond with _I'm your **brother** , I should be able to hug you any time you want_, but the misery in Georgia's eyes--impossibly dark in the dim room--hadn't let him.)

Now, her face pressed into his shirt, Georgia inhaled his scent as if she could carry it with her like a talisman. "It's not really fair that wolf-heat makes you smell _this_ amazing right when the mating happens."

He kissed the top of her head. "Yeah, and it's just plain weird that Glimmer being in heat amps up your sense of smell so much."

Georgia peeled herself away. "Not really. Some women's sensitivity to scents gets really sharp when they're pregnant."

"Okay, a) I take the same bio class you do, and b) not only are you not pregnant, but Glimmer isn't either, so getting that side effect through her is, I repeat, just plain weird."

"Wasn't my idea." Her hands drifted up the fronts of her thighs until she noticed and clasped them. "God, I want you."

 _No, you don't,_ darted through Shaun's head, but he kept it to himself--and not only because her desire was so tangled up in itself by Glimmer's heat, a need that was both indiscriminate and excruciatingly specific. Georgia was biting her lip absently, her knuckles pale from how tightly she was squeezing her hands together; he knew from experience how wet she had to be, how desperately she wanted to act on Glimmer's instincts.

She was only barely in control of her actions, and not at all in control of what she craved, and her emotions were raw enough to bruise even more easily than her skin would. The saving grace was that her vulnerability was too obvious for Shaun to forget about it and tease too hard--or voice half-truths that would gut her when any other time she'd shrug them off.

"And you still want me there?" he asked instead.

Her fidgeting stopped. "Yes and no, just like every other time we've talked about it."

That had an uncomfortable echo of their father's sharp criticism when Shaun had insisted on staying in the house for Glimmer's second heat. Georgia didn't _want_ Shaun to see her going through what was about to happen; she didn't want it to happen at all. But _It's a huge thing about me that you've never seen,_ she'd said, the first time she raised the idea of him accompanying her. _If you can handle watching, I don't want to hide it from you._

 _Would having me there help?_ Shaun had asked.

 _I don't know._ She'd sounded so calm, as if they were discussing something abstract and harmless; Glimmer's soft whine betrayed the emotion roiling underneath. _But I doubt it'll make anything **worse**._

Now they were on the verge of finding out if that was true, and Shaun was queasy for reasons he couldn't pin down--not for lack of options, but because the possible causes seemed infinite.

"Did you decide what to do about the pills?" he asked.

Georgia nodded. "No sedatives. But I took the muscle relaxants this time."

"Probably a good call."

**********

"Aren't you a little young to be in here?" asked someone standing right at his elbow--closer than Shaun was used to anyone getting without him noticing. He barely managed not to flinch in surprise.

"Not if she isn't." He nodded across the room to Georgia, who had just blindfolded herself to protect her light-sensitive eyes, then glanced at the unfamiliar woman who was talking to him. "We're eighteen."

"I know. You're Shaun Mason, the kid Irwin with a great angle for a story. Your 'life among the giant toothy predators' series gets a lot of play at my Wolfhall."

"' _Apex_ predators'," Shaun said, mildly wounded.

"No camera today?"

The strength of the immediate urge to punch her for the mere suggestion was a sharp reminder that he was off balance from the sheer degree of how fucked up the entire situation was. Shaun sucked in a deep breath and forced his hands to relax, then took a real look at her.

She was probably twice his age, with laugh lines starting to settle in at the corners of her eyes--the sort of lines that suggested kind laughter, not the bleak attempt at humor she'd just offered. Her lips twitched ruefully. "Sorry. That was probably more insulting than funny."

"Yeah."

"Married ten years, and I still haven't worked out the best coping mechanism for this stuff." She shook her head. "I'm Varsha. My husband Jake is one of the guys over there with your sister. Her wolf's been showing signs of favoring his. Need a drink?"

"I'm good," Shaun said, latching onto the last thing she'd said. "I mean, I'm _not_ good, but I don't think getting buzzed would help, and if I get trashed, what's the point of being here?"

"I think we all ask ourselves that sometimes, sober or not. Let me know if you change your mind." Varsha raised the beer bottle she was holding, gave it a pointed swish, and took a drink. "I don't think I've ever seen someone bring a sibling to a mating."

"I guess." Shaun shrugged, leaning back against the wall, and took a stab at getting the focus off himself and Georgia. "This must be hard for you."

Varsha's mouth twisted. "Watching him get ready to screw a girl half my age? It isn't fun. But I feel worse for your sister, to be honest. She been through this before?"

"It's her wolf's fourth heat. Second mating."

"And she wants you here?" Varsha politely kept the skepticism out of her voice, but it was plain in her eyes.

"Last time we were still living with our parents," Shaun said. "It didn't matter what she wanted. So she's trying this out. Having me here." Varsha's next question was written all over her face. "And if me being here makes it easier for her, then that's what I want too. It can't be worse than my imagination."

Varsha sighed. "Wouldn't bet on that. She's gonna be a mess."

Shaun said, "I know," and didn't look away quickly enough to avoid seeing pity darken her gaze.

"Maybe you do," she allowed. "But you probably don't, honey. The--" She said the next words carefully, as if they were sharp "--'educational videos' focus too much on the physical. I get it--if someone slips up, people die. But in my opinion they don't even prep the wolf-bound properly, never mind the rest of us, and then no one really talks about it. It's an old-boys' club in a lot of ways. Most of the guys have too much of a macho streak to admit the downsides."

"That's comforting," Shaun muttered.

"Wasn't meant to be." Varsha sipped her beer. "When your sister's bitch mated before, how long was it until you saw her afterwards?"

"George? Um...the next morning, I guess."

"How was she?"

"Exhausted. Burned out." He swallowed hard, keeping his voice steady. "Kinda battered."

"Coherent?"

Shaun's guts twisted. "Yeah. Pretty much."

"Well, I guess everyone reacts differently," Varsha said. "But I know what most people with wolf-sisters are like once they're fucked out from heat. Some things are universal. And Jake's best friend is single and bound to a bitch, so I've seen it up close. He's come to us afterwards more than once."

The internet had plenty of descriptions of what was never officially called "being fucked out", and Shaun had read as many as he could find. But the information was all secondhand and contradictory, and the common elements were similar enough to how Georgia had seemed after the time he'd been with her through Glimmer's heat that he'd assumed she _had_ been in that ill-defined state when it was over.

For the first time, he wasn't sure.

"What can you tell me?" he asked. Every instinct told him to find Georgia's eyes with his, hold her gaze, no matter how often he looked at her face and saw her blindfolded.

Varsha wet her lips. "When Paulo's heat breaks, he's different from his usual self. Babbles some, then goes quiet, then back to babbling. It's like his language centers only have full-on and full-off settings."

She fell silent. Shaun followed her gaze to the bed at the back of the room, where Georgia was sitting. Quietly, Varsha said, "Being in here doesn't mean you've got to watch."

The only thing about the bed that was reminiscent of popular culture's dreams of wild wolf-heat orgies was its size. The sheets covering it were the sterile white of hospital bedding, tucked in with crisp military precision. There were pillows, but no blankets. Nothing to hide whatever acts took place on top of it; nothing to obscure the inevitable bodily fluids. Between the expanse of bleached white and the keen nose of the wolf present--an older bitch, past breeding age--any trace of blood or anything else that might carry live-state Kellis-Amberlee would be detected immediately.

The wolf-bound men milling around the bed were staring at Georgia--at her body--with more desperation than desire, every one of them sporting a visible erection. Blindfolded or not, she had to know; she was shifting on the mattress in a way Shaun recognized. He itched for an earpiece, an open channel to her, so he could say...something, anything. So she wouldn't be alone with strangers, even if she couldn't call for him to be at her side. So he could hear her _breathe_.

Something like a murmur passed through the room. Everyone present who wasn't caught up in the spell of impending mating glanced over at the monitor that offered a view of the wolves involved, out in a mating yard. A large steel-gray wolf was approaching Glimmer.

One of the men near the bed went towards it, stumbling in a way reminiscent of someone going through the beginnings of amplification--a body driven by urges that didn't originate in his own mind. "That's Jake," Varsha said softly.

Jake sat beside Georgia, mouth moving on words Shaun couldn't make out. Jake put one hand on his own crotch and the other on Georgia's cheek. She shook her head vehemently, the "no" clear on her lips.

"He's trying to make it easier on her," said Varsha. "Some folks do better with as much gentleness as possible."

"She doesn't like things sugarcoated," Shaun replied. "Even if that means it sucks more than it technically has to."

Varsha nodded and let it go.

They both watched while Georgia stood and reached under the skirt of her dress. She tugged her underwear off, letting them drop to the floor before she got on her hands and knees on the bed, rigid and quivering.

Jake climbed up behind her, unzipped his pants, and rolled a condom on with more care than Shaun thought _he_ could have managed in the same situation; Jake was trembling as violently as Georgia was, and applying the condom made his erection jerk like he was about to come. He smeared lube onto the latex, then pushed Georgia's skirt up around her hips, baring her skin.

Shaun didn't let himself react outwardly to the sight of her partial nudity. Or to the way her hips bucked in Jake's hands, pushing back hungrily--the way she _offered_ herself, letting Jake palm her ass, rub his hands over the backs of her thighs. Her head dropped onto her forearms, exposing the nape of her neck, the exquisitely sensitive spot where Shaun always kissed her...

Shaun didn't budge. He wasn't sure he'd be able to breathe or make another sound for as long as Glimmer's mating lasted. His body felt like a statue, stone-limbed and trapped by the weight in his stomach. Georgia's head was down because she couldn't hold it up; her body was shaking, and a stranger's fingers were exploring, penetrating her ass--that was _good_ , Shaun told himself. Jake was trying to make sure he wouldn't hurt her, checking to see that she'd applied lube too. It was the right thing to do, both to keep from hurting her and to protect everyone there by minimizing the risk of bleeding.

On the monitor, Glimmer was finally permitting the male wolf to mount her.

The stone in Shaun's guts grew heavier. Through the speakers, a howl swelled, and Georgia's voice answered it--her _voice_ , not her. The pack-sense had taken her, or she'd given herself to it.

The sound of her voice made Shaun's skin prickle with uncomfortable memory. He'd only heard her sound that way once before, during Glimmer's second heat, when Georgia had tried so desperately to put what was happening to her into words--the words that were both her gift and her most natural weapon. The words that had abandoned her, leaving her begging for something she couldn't quite explain and Shaun couldn't quite give.

This was different. This was only a broken, hoarse chant of _Please please please please_ , all need, no thought of anything but the emptiness inside her. No need to explain any of it to Jake as he hovered over her, not in this liminal place where a stranger knew her needs better than Shaun could.

Shaun's eyes tried to close, as if not seeing would keep him from knowing what was happening. Every part of him was burning to touch Georgia, to ease the need consuming her. To hold her, just _hold her_ until she stopped quivering.

He managed to keep watching until the moment Georgia shrieked as Jake finally pushed into her. The cry was mindless and triumphant, adding a new note to Glimmer's familiar song.

This time Shaun's eyes did snap shut, in an instinctive attempt to block the sights that went along with those noises, but it didn't help any more than he'd thought it would. He took a deep breath and looked again.

Beside him, Varsha took another deep swallow of beer. The two of them stood and watched while her husband set a frantic pace, while the room filled with the rhythmic sounds of flesh against flesh, of low cries and snarls.

**********

Shaun lost track of time. Wolf matings weren't quick; he'd known that, known that the males stayed inside the females' bodies for prolonged periods, while the men--not _always_ men, but usually--bound to them grimaced and grunted and fucked and fucked, trapped on the brink of orgasm until their brothers finished.

Unseen under the folds of Georgia's dress, bruises had to be blossoming on her hips and sides from Jake's desperate grip. Shaun couldn't pretend otherwise; instead, he made himself visualize the purpling marks, how similar they'd be to the ones she'd worn home after Glimmer's previous mating, and to the ones Shaun himself had left on her during Glimmer's second heat. Sooner or later he and Georgia would be alone in their rooms, and she'd take that dress off, and Shaun wanted to be calm when she did. He couldn't predict everything she might need from him, but "calm" would be high on the list.

He leaned back and imagined the evidence taking shape on her body, acquainting himself with the idea.

When Jake's wolf was finally satisfied, Jake himself climaxed with no sign of pleasure, pulling out and letting go of Georgia immediately.

She twisted away the second all contact between them was broken, sitting up and gasping. Two wolfless men gripped Jake's arms and held him still, forming a living wall between Georgia and the other men whose wolf-brothers were out with Glimmer. The female wolf in the room approached to investigate, sniffing between Georgia's legs and between Jake's, then sniffing them each thoroughly all over for good measure.

Verdict: no blood. No live KA anywhere.

Then there was nothing to do but wait: wait to see what Glimmer would do, wait while she surveyed the remaining male wolves, while their human brothers stared at Georgia as if she were oxygen, or heroin, or something they'd been denied all their lives and had always known would satisfy some unanswerable need. She yanked the skirt defiantly back down, covering herself, and waited with the rest of them to see if Glimmer was sated.

 _There were four,_ she'd told Shaun after Glimmer's previous mating. _Four men, one after the other. I didn't have time to breathe. Or think._

Glimpsing movement on the monitor--in the mating yard--Shaun turned to look. When he looked back at Georgia again, another man was stepping purposefully forward, and no one was hindering him, least of all Georgia herself.

**********

Eventually, out in the yard, Glimmer shook herself and snapped at all of the males, including Jake's. Whether or not she understood somehow that no pups were likely to come of this mating, she was finished.

On the bed, with the men whose wolves hadn't mated still staring greedily at her, still visibly hard, Georgia slumped in relief, massaging her temple.

"She's done, right?" Shaun asked Varsha, his voice a dry rasp. "Can I go help her now?" The idea of taking even one step towards Georgia and being obliged to back away again dissolved the boulder in his stomach to acid. If he moved an inch, he had to be able to touch her.

If she wanted him to. Maybe she wouldn't, he reminded himself. Not yet.

"Yes," Varsha said. "They're done."

"Thanks." It sounded too perfunctory. Shaun made himself glance away from Georgia and at Varsha, really _seeing_ her. She looked back at him, exhaustion dulling her eyes. _I feel worse for your sister,_ she'd said about Georgia, sympathy in lieu of anger or real jealousy.

"Seriously, thanks," he repeated.

She nodded acknowledgment. "Go get your sister, Shaun. Give her a good stiff drink or three, get her to wash up, and put her to bed. That's what I'll be doing for my fella."

**********

He took her home without a word, helping her walk steadily. She went straight into the shower and didn't come out for half an hour, by which time Glimmer was back, looking immensely pleased with herself. Georgia came into the living room wrapped in a towel, dropped to her knees, and put her arms around Glimmer's neck while the wolf nuzzled her and sneezed at the bleach smell emanating from her.

Neither human mentioned the bruising all along Georgia's hips and sides. She didn't try to hide it, and Shaun didn't let his gaze linger, even when she let him be the one to work lemon-scented moisturizer into her skin. It was only when he touched her more lightly where she was bruised that she acknowledged the blackberry-purple marks at all, putting her hand over his and pressing it hard against her hip.

"Touch me everywhere," she said dreamily--still fogged by the pack-sense, still making her way back to him.

He did. With her murmured encouragement, he gripped her hard in those bruised places, then kissed them.

Later, he ran a hot bath and sat by the tub while she soaked and drank heavily-spiked cranberry juice until she was barely conscious. He helped her towel off and made her drink as much water as she could handle, and then he put her to bed, like Varsha had said.

He waited until Georgia was asleep--passed out, if he was honest--before he let himself go be sick.

Glimmer followed him into the bathroom and sniffed the air once. Then, reassured that Shaun wasn't _ill_ , she sprawled across the doorway and waited; her presence was the only indication that she was concerned.

**********

"I didn't get turned on," Shaun mumbled into Georgia's neck the next night, when Glimmer was asleep at their feet.

Stillness and silence were Georgia's only answer at first. Then she said, "Did you expect to?"

"I thought I might." He grimaced. "And then I could've gotten an award for most inappropriate and awkwardly-timed boner ever. But I wasn't positive which part of my brain it'd hit."

Georgia squirmed out of his arms and switched a black light on, casting the familiar purple hue over their skin. "Keep talking."

"Because I got hard for you when you were begging for me like that," he said. "Because it's _you_ , and because you're not ashamed of it. And you shouldn't be. But I didn't want to get turned on from watching you get used like that."

"Don't say it like that." She nestled close again, giving him warmth without softening the correction. "I'm using them as much as they're using me."

"I know," Shaun said. "Sorry."

Very quietly, she added, "It doesn't mean I'm not ashamed."

 _That_ kindled anger in his chest. "You shouldn't be," he repeated.

"I know." Georgia curled against him. "And I know you know.

"The weirdest part is how glad I am to have people there when it's happening. It's not some dark secret. No one here thinks I'm an animal or a slut or whatever."

Shaun kissed her temple. "No one thinks you're a deviant."

At that, she laughed. "You mean no one here _knows_ I'm a deviant, brother mine." She lifted herself up and found his mouth with hers. "I am. We are. And I'm not ashamed."

*********

> _[GAP: One final skip ahead--just a few months this time.]_

**********

"Ready?" the tattoo artist asked.

Georgia took one last quick glance around the tattoo studio. Choosing it hadn't been hard; it hadn't even really been a choice. The studio was barely outside the Wolfhall proper, and while it might not have been where she would have gone to get a purely ornamental tattoo done--or it might have been; she hadn't looked into it--the artists all specialized in the traditional Wolfhall identification patterns.

She'd had the simplest of those patterns, a tattooed bracelet identifying her as wolf-bound, since soon after Glimmer had chosen her. But in several hours, she and Shaun would both be inked from right wrist to elbow with the swirls and sigils that linked them to their Wolfhall; Shaun might be wolfless, but Georgia and Glimmer claiming him as _pack_ entitled him to the marks.

Those tattoos were elaborate and beautiful, typically done in a black as deep as Georgia's eyes. The only color would be on the back of Georgia's hand, an abstract representation of Glimmer's scent-name. It was going to hurt like hell, all of it, and Georgia wasn't able to anticipate it the way Shaun was. She was braced; Shaun was more than ready to roll with the sensation and the experience.

The far more standard identification tattoos they were each getting on their left forearms, their new journalist license numbers in simple red and blue, were practically afterthoughts.

"Ready as I'm going to be," Georgia replied.

"Great." The artist gave her a quick smile, then pulled the protective mask over his face.

**********

George is gonna break down the numbers and shit about how awesome today was, so if you're into that, drop by her blog in an hour or two. It's good stuff to know, and I have _no idea_ about any of it, because today? I went out zombie-poking with my sister's trellwolf. Just the two of us. George was beyond not feeling it, so we set up a rock-solid open line to each other, and she stayed in the van and wrote while she relayed anything Glimmer picked up that I needed to know.

I'm pretty sure that's a first, and remember: accept no imitations. You've seen other Irwins hit the field with their own wolf-sibs, but Glimmer and I were out there _**exploring uncharted territory**_ , and we've got the footage to prove it. So buckle up and hit "play", guys, and let us show you a whole new kind of wild adventure.

\--From _Hail to the King_ , the blog of Shaun Mason. March 27, 2037.

**Author's Note:**

> _[As you can see, if you've read all six chapters, there isn't exactly a tidy ending to wrap this up. But the related/sequel story,["Lost to Each Offering of Tenderness"](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Psychic_Wolves/works/13687731), **is** complete. That story takes place during the same time period as Feed, when Georgia and Shaun are 23 and on Senator Peter Ryman's campaign team.]_
> 
> \--Title from Dan Fogelberg's "Nexus"
> 
> \--Primary beta work by wildpear; additional betaing by Kayim and walkthegale


End file.
